OSABC : And Then There Were None
by LogicalPremise
Summary: A continuation of the Alternative Universe story in "Of Sheep and Battle Chicken" , as Major-Commander Shepard deals with her promotion, a series of threats that could take down the government of the SA, and the ramifications of humanity joining the Council. Includes Pinnacle Station and Bring Down the Sky. M for language and violence. FShep/Liara. Co-Author Progman. Now complete.
1. Chapter 1 : Arc I : Major Changes

**Of Sheep and Battle Chicken : And Then There Were None **

_(AKA The Sexual Adventures of Shepard Featuring Naked Thane)  
_

_Not. _

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**A/N and Intro:**

_Welcome to OSABC: And Then There Were None. ATTWN is a continuation of my AU rewrite of Mass Effect 1, titled "Of Sheep and Battle Chicken". This story covers the period of time from the end of ME1 to the beginning of the two years before ME2. It's a story about the trials and tribulations of one Sara Ying Shepard, a story about maturation, about overcoming pain in one's past, about having a kinky ancient asari for a father-in-law, and about god-stomping the shit out of Batarians._

_In case the story summary eluded you, this is FShep/Liara. Other pairings include Joker/Tali, Garrus/OC, Ash/Kai (but Kaiden is teh ded), and Chakwas/OC (eventually). Things you will not see include a stupid Council, moronically evil Cerberus, weak-ass turians, or pretty much anything that Bioware half-assed. The story runs on the Rule of Crazy Awesome, so in game terms the setting is a mix between Insanity and Easy. _

__It's also a story about the difference between being a martyr and being a hero.__

_As an aside: This is rated M for strong language and heavily violence. While there are a number of sexual innuendos, there are no explicit sex scenes in this work. Given my version of Shepard's proclivities, that's probably for the best. _

_This is an AU (Alternative Universe) fic. I have taken a shotgun to canon in every possible way, and if you think I changed things up in the first story, you are in for a **treat**. That means you will be completely lost if you haven't read the first story – and if you click my profile, you can see other supporting documentation that fleshes out the backstory of the universe, such as the **Cerberus Files, the Systems Alliance Order of Battle, and the Encyclopedia Biotica**.  
_

_None of these are required reading, but if you ever wonder why salarians operate in bullet-time, asari have biotic lightsabers, and the entire universe is a vile, conspiracy ridden shithole that makes 40k look like My Little Pony...you may wish to check them out._

_This linking piece is something I've always wished Bioware would do. I never liked the fact that barely a few weeks past defeating Saren, Shepard got killed. No promotions, no new ships, nothing but "go hunt Geth". No military force is that stupid. At the very least they would have given her some awards – something. Instead we got no real 'closure' at the start of ME2. Do not even get me started on the stupidity of Shepard falling through the atmosphere and doing anything but burning up entirely and splattering on an icy rock. I fixed that too._

_The story is told in five arcs. _

_The first arc covers the aftermath of Shepard's promotion to Major of Marines, and serves as prologue._

_The second arc covers Shepard training under Admiral Ahern at Pinnacle Station. _

_The third arc covers her leave period, and some other minor fluff. _

_The fourth arc covers my version of Bring Down the Sky. _

_The fifth arc is the fall of the Normandy, and the recovery of Shepard's Body. _

_Hopefully I can get this completed in short order. (Progman, stop laughing at me)  
_

_Before we start this trip, I want to bring up a story. A story that has not gotten anywhere near the proper number of reviews. A story that is so goddamned brilliant I feel like a hack compared the writer. That story is **"Living an Indoctrinated Dream" by Aberron.** If you like my writing, check his out._

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**THE FIRST ARC : MAJOR CHANGES  
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"_Never forget the best weapon any soldier has is their mind, and the worst weakness is their emotions." – Major Kyle, 'Reflections of the Lion'_

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The endless black curtain of space shattered in a blaze of light as the long, low shape of the Alliance cruiser Accra erupted from FTL, lightning flickering briefly over the pale white surfaces of the ship. Ahead of her, backlit by the awesome swirls and storms of the gas giant it orbited, the bulk of Arcturus Station loomed. A thousand ships moved in complicated patterns from the edge of the station, some flickering into FTL with a displacement of space, others flaring thrusters to dive down towards the inner solar system.

The Accra smoothly accelerated, bursts of energy flaring as it lowered it's kinetic barriers on approach. Aboard the vessel, a calm voice rang out over the 1MC announcement system, almost droning in it's pitch.

"Attention. All hands prepare for docking. Engineering, draw core output down to nominal levels. Tech-team Three, report to docking connector bay two for hardlock systems checks."

Major-Commander Sara Shepard sighed as shudders ran through the frame of the small cabin she was assigned. Her dark black hair fell in limp curtains around the dark features of her face, cold blue eyes boredly scanning over the datapad in her hands, lips drawn down into a scowl. The cabin she was in was spartan and mostly bare, boasting a narrow bed, a set of lockers, and the small desk and chair unit she was sitting at. Like most Systems Alliance warships, living space was at a premium, and even with her new rank and importance, she didn't rate much more than bumping the XO from his room.

Still, it was better than making the trip stuck in a hibernation coffin. The people she had brought with her – Liara, Tali, Pressly and Joker – were given smaller cabins, somewhere on the second deck of the ship carrying her to her new command. Only by dint of a long and tedious amount of haggling with the SA Bureau of Assignment had she been able retain command of any of her marines from the Normandy. Senior Chief Emilo Vega and two Drop-Assault Combat Troopers, Sergeants Jack Florez and Uriel Montoya were the only ones she could hang on to, since Ownby and Haskins would require months of rehabilitation, and Chief Haln had been given a honorable medical discharge due to his injuries.

Ashley Williams, of course, both pregnant and still wounded, couldn't make the trip, and it was likely she would be reassigned elsewhere anyway. Her old engineer Adams had been given a promotion and a job aboard a dreadnaught, and a berth near his wife, so he was happier where he was. The rest of her old crew was still on the Normandy, locked in repair cycles to fix the battering the frigate had taken in the act of chasing down Benezia.

The rest of the crew she would need for her new command would be assigned at Arcturus Station...where they were now docked. With a sigh, Shepard tucked the padd into her shipbag, sliding it along side her journal and a light pistol. Pausing to make sure she'd left nothing behind in the cabin, she picked up her duty duffel and exited the cabin once the final lurching motion and heavy clangs reverberating through the ship let her know docking was completed.

The corridor outside was standard Alliance. Heavy white bulkheads, steel decking, a foam-sprayed overhead festooned with cabling and TDL piping. Arcane letters were embossed on the walls to identify electrical access hatches and damage control equipment, and blocky lockers jutted out at just the right angle to painfully crack against an elbow if one wasn't careful.

Still unfamiliar with the layout of the Accra – she'd only been aboard two days, and much of that time was spent with Pressly going over command requirements – she managed to find her way to the main assembly deck. The deck ran half the length of the ship, a combination of assembly hall, galley, and lounge for the ship's crew. Equipment lockers hung from the junctions of bulkheads and overheads, while rows of tables dominated the center of the room, arranged around a haptic display screen showing recent news and entertainment.

Shepard glanced around, not seeing any of her crew, but before she could look her name was called from behind. She turned to see Captain Charles Swinton descending the stairs leading to the CIC. The commanding officer of the Accra came up to her, his slender figure almost comical against the bulky outlines of his uniform, his hair hacked down to stubble in a spacer's cut.

"Major Shepard. As you can probably tell, we are docked. Already getting priority traffic for you and yours to disembark, ma'am." He handed her a padd, it's surface covered in glaring red graphics indicating high security orders. "My men will offload any luggage you have, and the ships steward is collecting the rest of your command team. It's been a pleasure having you aboard."

She nodded, remembering she should smile at the man. "Thank you, Captain. You run a tight ship. Where should I go to meet up with my crew and board the station?" She glanced over the padd as she spoke, rolling her eyes at the fact that simple orders telling her to meet with her liaison were classified higher than the design specs of the Normandy.

Swinton pointed to the far end of the deck. "Docking bay two, ma'am. They're running across the hard-locks now. Should be someone there from the Admiralty waiting for you with transport."

She nodded, and he saluted, which she returned before walking away. The uniform she wore was no longer the comfortable and shapeless undress of a line officer, but the elaborate leather-paneled uniform of a command officer. The hanging gold chain and higher collar bothered her, and the heavy gold epaulets on each shoulder almost felt as if they were pressing down on her.

Still, she kept her head high and her face blank as she walked the length of the deck. Sailors and marines stared at her in poorly hidden fascination, which was nothing new.

Butcher of Torfan. Savior of the Citadel. Baroness. Twice awarded the Star of Terra. Less a person and more a collection of media perspectives, rumor, and hearsay, she doubted any of them could understand the living hell and journey of pain and growth she'd undergone the past year.

Not that it mattered. She had Liara. She had David. She had Kahlee and Aethyta, Tali and Joker, Garrus and Tel, Pressly and Jiong, and of course General Von Grath. Hell, she even included Udina in her 'list of people that made life worth living'.

_Let them stare._

With a slight grimace she stepped through the heavy bulkhead doorway, a twinge of pain in her thigh reminding her that, even with modern medicine, she'd very nearly died not too long ago fighting Lady Benezia. The thigh wound had healed, but the bone was a touch weak, and that wasn't including all the other assorted injuries she'd collected in the chase and final fight.

Many people thought she was a lethal warrior, but sometimes she felt like she got by with more luck than skill. Some enterprising hacker had managed to get a hold of the surveillance footage in the Council Chamber. While thankfully there was no audio, the video of the fight was impressive enough for most people to be overawed. Yet when she had looked at it, at her own actions in that fight, she only saw her getting her ass beaten like a drum. Fighting a biotic warrior who was killing back when humans were still using swords wasn't easy.

If not for Liara, there were several times that Benezia would have splattered Shepard's brains over the stupidly opulent Council Chambers.

Turning down a narrow, armored corridor, she was lost in her thoughts. The bag over her shoulder made it a bit hard to maneuver as the ship's company began to head to the disembarkation area, and several times she brushed past sailors and techs. She decided to stop woolgathering when she nearly shoulder-checked an inattentive marine into a wall, and apologized with a mutter.

Passing the last of the crowd, she saw an asari in a SA officer uniform, next to a quarian female and a single human male, all gathered in a tight knot near a massive airlock that already stood open.

_Her_ people.

Walking up, she nodded to Liara first, then to the rest of the team. "Everyone have a good trip? And where is Jiong?"

Joker, unsurprisingly, was the first to pipe up. "Haven't seen him. He's probably off terrorizing the ship's XO or something. And no, the trip sucked. Whoever the pilot is needs to trim up his drive alignment, I could feel the ship shaking even from my cabin. And I'll never complain about the coffee on the Normandy again. Ugh."

Tali shrugged, after giving Jeff a look. "I didn't really feel comfortable wandering around. Some of the sailors gave me strange looks." Tali had made slight modifications to her suit since Shepard talked her into joining the SA fleet military – rank stripes carefully painted on her left arm, quarian fashion, and the SA logo and her name were neatly stenciled across her chest. The SA was apparently working on a uniform code for quarians, but it wasn't completed yet, so Tali could pretty much wear what she liked.

Liara, on the other hand, was wearing standard SA undress blues, which Shepard felt looked disturbingly good on her, emphasizing her figure in ways they'd never done for Shepard. "The ship's library was quite extensive. I spent some time looking into your fleet regulations. They are not far different than the security and discipline agreements I had to work under for many archeological digs."

Joker rolled his eyes. "And back to the science again."

Pressly walked up a moment later, his own shipbag slung over one big shoulder. "Your marine team is being offloaded now, ma'am. I've already messaged Arcturus Command of our arrival and our transportation is waiting. Commissar Jiong messaged me a few minutes ago, he will be along presently after he reports to the regional Commissariat command."

Shepard gave him a wide smile. "Pressly, what would I do without you?"

He only shrugged. "Just doing my job, ma'am. I'd rather do my job than have to do yours. Too much shooting for my taste." He turned to glance Joker. "But speaking of taste, and with all due respect...couldn't we have found a less mouthy pilot?"

Joker snickered, and Shepard found her spirits lifting. "Let's get a move on, people."

The trip through Arcturus Station was an eye-opener for Tali and Liara. Few non-humans ever visited the massive station, home not only of the main command of the SA Second Fleet but also where many Senators and other government officials resided. Half the year the SA Senate convened on Arcturus, dealing with laws and issues affecting the SA outside of the Sol System.

The station was gigantic. While no match for the sheer mass of the Citadel, it was still more than two miles long and nearly half that in depth. There were two pieces to the construction – a spherical core, mostly living spaces and business areas, and two long 'wings' that angled away from the core at ninety degree angles, filled with docking areas, warehouses, and industrial parks.

Transport through the station was done with line-cars – maglev vehicles on long powered tracks, each one holding twenty people or tons of cargo. Shepard and her team were on one such vehicle now, the endless ranks of warehouses and storage bays in the port docking flashing by in smears of gray and Alliance white.

The mag-line dipped under a heavy armored bulkhead, angling down and then leveling off to enter the Sphere. It was a huge open space, with much care taken to provide a natural setting near the center. Rows of windows jutted from tall racks of buildings that extended from the curving walls, while smaller buildings were centered around platforms built up towards the middle. The floor of the Sphere was flattened, filled with small buildings, a lake, and groups of imported trees and grass from Earth.

Tali smiled. "It's like a miniature Presidium..."

It was Pressly who spoke next. "Yes. It used to be much different – a lot more utilitarian, all ugly buildings and the like, but after humanity got a chance to see the Citadel, President Jackson spent large amounts of money refurbishing Arcturus. He wanted aliens who saw the Gateway to Sol to be impressed with our race, and … well, I think they got a bit carried away."

Shepard snorted. "A bit?" She pointed at a long series of metallic walls framing various tanks of water, each containing certain kinds of sea-life from Earth. "They built an aquatic zoo!"

Liara nodded. "My people would find that an attractive area. The landscaping is very elegant..."

Shepard only snorted.

O-ATTWN-O

It took a good three hours to get the ball rolling. She had to hustle Liara and Tali over to the main Administrative the two of them for their ranking aptitudes, since neither the asari or the quarian had any SA military background. Then she and Pressly had to hunt down her Marines, and their gear, and get them to a barracks. Finally, she met up with Jiong briefly before sending him and Pressly off to gather up the rest of her command team – whoever they were – and for Pressly to get ops orders and check out the state of the Kazan.

After all of that, she barely had time for a quick meal at a fast food stand before she report to her liaison Following the instructions on the padd she'd been given on the Accra, she arrived at what the sign out front said was Special Operations Command. The office building she entered was pure Alliance in it's architecture – sweeping lines, white armorplast and gray bulkhead plating, plain blue and white carpeting. Inside, a disgustingly handsome ensign with stars in his eyes leapt to attention and said he'd take her to her new office.

She was escorted to an upper floor, passing a series of smoked-glass rooms and strange signs such as 'Exfiltration Debrief – No Admittance' and 'Sanctioned CI', eventually reaching a large office overlooking the central park area of Arcturus through a series of wide windows. The brass nameplate on the door read "Maj Shepard, CO BG Chiron" in deeply embossed lettering, and the room beyond was luxuriously appointed.

A heavy desk of black armorplast dominated the room, it's surface half taken up with haptic screens, a large chair behind it. One wall was covered with a haptic map of Alliance space, the other with empty shelving, a small doorway half open showing a bathroom, and a set of lockers. Thick carpets covered the floor and two crates of something marked 'Admr. Supp. , Misc' took up a corner of the room.

Standing in the room as Shepard entered was a young woman in a sharply-cut suit of pastel blue and white, with an SA pin on her lapel. Her honey-blond hair was almost severely cut, long bangs framing a beautiful but cold face, with the same hard eyes as President Windsor. Her voice was an even , calming contralto, and her posture was almost military in it's bearing.

"Welcome, Major. This will be your office and duty station when not onboard your new ship. I'm Elizabeth Windsor-Turham, your liaison officer and technically your link to Uncle James. Have a seat."

Shepard nodded, shutting the door behind her, and walking over to the desk. She sat down almost experimentally in the heavy leather chair, even as Elizabeth pulled up another comfortable chair and placed herself in front of the desk, her hands holding a thick padd.

Shepard exhaled. "Still getting used to this, ma'am."

Elizabeth inclined her head slightly, an eerie copy of the motion Shepard had seen President Windsor do several times. She seemed naturally elegant and refined, in a way that made Shepard feel a little clumsy and plain, but the crispness of her speech gave her no time to reflect. "That is to be expected. You have been elevated to the heights of human society, in terms both military and socially. But we have little time to allow you to settle into your new post, I fear."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "I was under the impression that I was going to be given training and time to get used to this situation. Is that not the case?"

Elizabeth waggled a hand. "To a degree. However, I'm afraid in the past twelve hours certain political realities have changed the plans my uncle set up, and we will be forced to move more quickly than originally anticipated."

She tapped the padd. "My uncle is under siege, Major. I am not exaggerating in this. He has found evidence, based on several factors, that elements within the structure of the Systems Alliance are moving towards some larger goal, one he worries is not in the best interests of the SA. He has suspected this for some time – hence, his plans to utilize you being expressed as far back as your meeting on Noveria – but information he says you gave him, as well as information from unnamed sources, has him worried. He feels he may be removed from office or even assassinated if he pushes too hard to stop these influences."

Shepard scowled. "He's the President. Can't he just send in the AIS and Commissariat to clean whoever is behind this out?"

She shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. His powers are sharply limited by the Alliance Charter, while his enemies are both a danger to his political goals and the safety of the SA. To recklessly presume the AIS or the Commissariat are not in league with them would be premature at this stage. Additionally, given the delicacy of the issue, Uncle James is reluctant to force things now with an uncooperative, alien-hating government and a fleet that is in tatters."

The young woman exhaled, firming her jaw. "In many respects I wish this was simpler, but there is every possibility my own life is in danger, and so is yours. Thus, we will be forced to move swiftly, but in such a way that hopefully the forces arrayed against my uncle – and you – will think you are no longer a threat to them. With that in mind, I do not expect you to care much or assist with the political side of things, but your assignment to his personal command will require you to understand the larger situation in some detail."

With that, Elizabeth brought up the big display screen on one wall. "Your first task is command training and a shakedown cruise of the SCH Kazan, your new command. We've done what we could to get you the best crew on short notice. They won't quite be the elite crash-team of the Normandy, but each one of the ratings and NCO's will have at least five years experience, and your marine regiment all are experienced A-rates, with some … interesting additions."

The map flared. "The shakedown cruise will be simple, traveling from Arcturus to Watson to finish out the armaments of the ship, and engineering and combat drills on the return trip. You will have an escort of four destroyers, but they are not under your command and are there only in the event someone attacks the Kazan. Your XO, Chief Engineer and Science Officer are being briefed right now on their roles in this evolution, but it should be a fairly simple trip. Questions so far?"

Shepard shook her head. "None, ma'am, except the obvious – I assume the ship has been outfitted with stores, supplies, and the like? What are we picking up at Watson?"

Elizabeth nodded. "The ship is fully loaded, except for torpedoes for the center-line launcher. Techs at Watson have come up with a three-stage torpedo using degenerate matter carefully mined from a neutron star near Perseus. This new torpedo should have nine to ten times the yield of the old M-AM matrix torpedoes. Additionally, you'll be loading the new model M11X Sharktooth missiles, replacing the Spearfish."

She highlighted a section of the map, drawing a line from Watson to Arcturus. "You will perform weapon calibration in deep space on your return trip. Once everything checks out, we'll discuss the second phase of your in-brief before you ship out to Pinnacle Station. The agreement you reached with Admiral Retham throws a wrench into the deployment plans we had in mind … but after some thought, I believe that having older frigates and damaged destroyers gives us an opportunity."

Shepard frowned. "I'm not sure I follow. I agreed to the trade because … well, the Fleet needed them more than I did. But how is that an opportunity?"

The younger woman shrugged slightly, cutting off her padd."My uncle already has assignments planned for you, but it's clear you will require some training before those can be undertaken. That gives us time to refit and repair the vessels in your command … and since they are ineffective as they are, they will be test-beds for experimental new programs and armaments. Rather than repair them to original spec, some will be converted to missile units, or sensor units, or assault craft. This should give you additional flexibility that five Normandy class frigates wouldn't be able to match in terms of specialization."

Elizabeth stood. "You have two hours before the rest of your command team arrives. We've found a competent Navigator, of course, but you will also have to do an in-brief for your new BDO. A cruiser also has several other officers that you will need to brief. Your command team will arrive at 1500 sharp in this office, so I recommend you carefully read over the requirements and the plans of the day for your trip to Watson." She paused, thinking.

"The first phase of the plan is not much changed from our original concept. For the moment, I doubt you will be in any danger. It is the next phase after this where danger will begin, so use this opportunity to improve not only your command ability but your readiness for combat, if you can. I cannot say more at this time – to be honest, Uncle James is also keeping me in the dark to some degree – but I will be in touch upon your return, Major."

With that, she left the office, shutting the door behind her. Shepard looked across the office that was now hers before sighing. "Fuck." Deciding she'd review the stuff waiting for her in a minute, she fished a cigarette out of her uniform and searched for a place to smoke.

O-ATTWN-O

Meeting her command team was an interesting experience.

At 1500, Liara, Pressly and Tali entered, followed by Joker. A moment later six other humans entered, followed by the limping form of Commissar Alfred Jiong, wearing his usual black coat, red sash, and peaked cap, but using a cane.

Shepard had used the time to read up on the roles and responsibilities of each officer, and had their dossiers uploaded to her desk comp, but had never been in complete command of a battle group before. Reviewing their information had reassured her that, at least on paper, every one of them was solid, although the comm tech was very light on practical experience and the supply officer had no space-side chops. Still, they would do their duty, and with Liara and the gang to back her up, she was more worried about how they would interact than how well they did their jobs.

She was also able to pull up some information on the existing crews of the rest of her fleet, but skimmed over it and then dismissed it. Given that her ships were going to be put through dry-dock and rebuild, she doubted their existing crews and captains would stay in place. Still, two of them were coming to this meeting as well, the two most likely to hang around, so it would be a good time to get a feel for them too.

She'd gotten the ensign downstairs to bring more chairs into her office, and gestured everyone to sit. "Alright, people, let's get started. I've never done this before, so if I'm a bit informal, well, get used to it."

"I'm already familiar with the officers I brought with me, but for the sake of everyone getting to know each other, we're all going to introduce ourselves. I'm Major-Commander Sara Shepard, CO of the Kazan and Battle Group Chiron. I'm an N7 biotic specialist in the Vanguard program, formerly C7 and A6 rate marine, and I've passed level IV and level V command, ops, and engineering classes. My previous command was the Normandy, a stealth scout frigate. My specialization in naval terms would be weapons systems, but I'm qualified if not experienced in piloting and CIC ops. My personal pet peeve is people who don't tell me everything I need to know up front."

She turned to Pressly. "Commander Pressly."

Pressly straightened his uniform. "Commander Charles Pressly, O6 CIC, P5 Weapons, rated Navigator, level nine. Seventeen years service, four as an A-Rate marine, P4. I've passed level V command, engineering, ops, and service classes and am a Q3 rated naval pilot. Previous commands were the New Orleans as Navigator, the Normandy as Navigator and then executive officer. Specialization is in CIC battle ops and ECM deployment. I strive for excellence in all things and expect everyone under Major Shepard's command to do the same."

She nodded. "Commissar Jiong is my political officer. Alfred?"

Jiong took off his hat. "Commissar-Captain Alfred Jiong, Systems Alliance Commissariat. I'm afraid very few of my skills translate cleanly into the MCV rating, but I'm roughly on par with an N-series marine in terms of combat ability, and my shipboard specialization is encryption systems and basic ops and ECM handling. I do have some skill in both engineering and weapons, but not to the level that I would stand a watch comfortably. I have extensive xenology training and speak asari and two salarian cants, along with some turian. As with all senior commissars and like the Major here, I am a qualified biotic, and I assisted Major Shepard during the last stages of her mission against Lady Benezia."

He paused. "You will note there are non-human crew members here, namely Lady Liara and Ms. Zorah. If I have a pet peeve, it would be if citizens of the SA – which both ladies are – are subjected to bigotry or racist remarks. If anyone has a problem serving alongside people who risked their lives to protect us all, then you will wish to find another berth, for I have no tolerance for such. Other than that, I consider my primary focus to assist Major Shepard, not to police the crew."

She smiled. "Thank you. What he said goes double for me. Liara and Tali aren't just crew, they are my very close friends. If it's a problem working with them, let me know now, not later."

No one spoke up, and she smiled. "Good! I don't have to throw anyone out the window. Let's proceed."

Shepard glanced at Joker. "Ah, right. Lieutenant Commander Jeff Moreau. Callsign Joker. Q7 rated naval pilot class fifteen. No, I didn't misspeak. R6 rating small craft. Nine years of service. Lead pilot on the San Angeles and secondary pilot on the Calais, and primary pilot on the Normandy. Specialization is flying my ass off. I really hate it when people assume since I have medical issues with my bones that I'm helpless. Seriously, don't do that."

Shepard sighs. "You'll get used to Joker. Unfortunately." She glanced at Liara.

"Y-yes. Lieutenant Liara T'Soni. I believe I will be … promoted … to Lieutenant Commander once we are formally assigned to the Kazan, where I will be the Science and Intelligence Officer. I have been given a rating of K7 xenology, asari as well as a provisional Y3 R&amp;D Rating, subtype space. I posses a doctorate in xenoarcheology and Prothean studies from the University of Serrice, and was a practicing archeologist prior to all of … the past year. According to the gentleman I spoke with at the administrative building, I also have the equivalent of a C7 biotic rating. My specializations include Prothean history and technology, archeology, geology, planetary physics, and xenological survival. I am afraid I have no prior service with the Systems Alliance...but I spent five years training with asari commandos under the instruction of a war priestess, and was a part of Shepard's team that stopped Saren and … Lady Benezia." She paused. "I am too new to all of this to .. have pet peeves?"

Shepard smiled, and glanced at Tali'Zorah. "I am Tali'Zorah nar Kazan, daughter of Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Alarei. I am a Lieutenant , provisionally a Lieutenant Commander, and Chief Engineer of the Kazan. I have passed an examination of level V Engineering technology given to me by a rated Chief Engineer, and taken the tests to posses a M6 engineering rating and a E4 damage control rating. I have three years experience working with engineering systems, including a year spent on the Normandy, and I spent two years training with the Migrant Fleet Marines. I was also part of Shepard's team. I specialize in ship systems and omni-repair systems. My only problems are with people who forget my name and call me 'quarian'."

Shepard smirked, and pointed to the first man she didn't know well. He was tall and barrel chested, with heavy muscles. His face was slightly familiar to Liara and Tali, but they didn't know why until he spoke. His features were dark and even, his brown eyes almost amused and his chin covered with a thin non-regulation goatee.

"I'm Lieutenant Tyrone Cole … the son of Master Chief Gregory Cole." He saw the flicker of grief on the faces of Shepard and Liara but continued. "I just completed Officer Training School, but I spent seven years as a B-rate on Horizon, and three as an A-Rate marine in the Sixth RRU. I have a J3 first aid responder qualification, level II security systems training, and I'm a R2 small craft pilot. I also have my authorization for N1 training to begin whenever I get time in my duty schedule. My specialization is direct assault and I'll be the ships Battle Duty Officer, ma'am." He folded his arms. "My only pet peeve is that I don't like marines who don't push themselves."

Shepard nodded. "Lieutenant … your father was a key part of my team. We miss him greatly, and I'm glad you decided to take this position...even knowing he fell under my command."

Lieutenant Cole snorted, in a way that sounded almost identical to his father. "Ma'am, with all due respect, that's the reason I am here. My father was … very, very proud to serve under you, on the Normandy, fighting to protect us all. He never wanted to die in any other fashion than he did – talking shit, standing on his feet, and making sure the job got done. And from what little they tell me about Eden Prime, if not for you he would have died there." He smiled. "I'll try to live up to the standards he set, but I'm afraid I can't fire a Revenant LMG one handed or choke out a geth."

At that, Shepard had a memory of Cole doing just that and laughed. "Well said, Lieutenant. Welcome aboard." She turned to the woman sitting next to him.

The woman was slightly built, with darkly tanned skin, dark wavy hair and serious if slightly nervous blue eyes. Her voice had a rich English accent with a hint of a stammer. "Ensign Samantha Traynor, ma'am. O3 Communications specialist, Comms Officer for the Kazan. Graduated Oxford University summa cum laude, two year OCS scholarship through the SA. Five months active service. Qualified as a level nine communications tech, and I speak asari, both dialects of turian, fleet-service quarian, and nineteen salarian cants. I'm trained in multispectrum data communications routing and second level intelligence support services, so I will be reporting to Lieutenant Commander T'Soni. I .. uh, don't have a lot of practical experience, ma'am – this will be my first ship posting. B-but I was the first of my class in all aspects of my job. Ma'am." She looked a mix of defensive and defiant, and Shepard smiled.

"We all start somewhere, Ensign. I'm not exactly sure what the hell multispectrum data communications routing even is, but that's why you have the job. If you're here, you are one of the best the SA has to offer. Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, ma'am. I won't let you down, ma'am."

Shepard turned to the man next in the line, who gave a nod. He was lanky and rather thin, with fading blond hair cut short, calm gray eyes, a narrow beak of a nose and bloodless lips. His voice was very deep, but he spoke rapidly and with a heavy Arcturus accent. "Lieutenant Commander Jerred Colms, ma'am. I'll be your weapons officer. Eight years experience on the Orizaba, the Orleans and two years with BuWeapons. P6 weapons tech, O3 targeting systems and CIC integration. Level V ops and weapons certifications. I helped design the new Kyle-class torpedoes we'll be taking onboard at Watson, and I have a doctorate in particle physics. Graduated from ArcTech, so this is my home. Had to beat out ninety-six applicants for the position. I'll also assist in maintaining the armory. Pet peeve is people who don't' take care of their weapons... doubt that will be a problem with you, ma'am, or Lieutenant Cole."

Shepard nodded. "Are you familiar with the rest of the Kazan's weapons systems, then?"

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am. The core of the ship is built around a mass-effect accelerated torpedo launcher. The acceleration solves the old problem of torpedoes taking so long to get on target – this launches them at a good fraction of light-speed, before enemy ECM can even respond. Main guns are three 27mm MA cannons and a 17 mm inline mass accelerator rated at 1.8 MeV with a slug mass of 11.2 pounds. Four 9mm MA turrets, port and starboard, with 280 degrees of rotation. Three banks of stage IV GARDIAN lasers, using chemically accelerated red-orange frequencies. And two banks of missile tubes, four per bank, with a ripple fire rate of six missile per second for nine seconds. Total torpedo capacity is forty, missile racks hold eight hundred missiles."

Shepard whistled. "Alright, you know your stuff backwards and forwards. Welcome aboard." She glanced at the man next to Colms, who coughed.

The man was a touch out of shape, but his jaw was firm even if it had a slight bit of stubble near the left ear. He was shaved bald with an SA tattoo barely visible on his neck and a scar bisected his cheek, trailing over his right eye. His eyes were black, or very dark brown, and his uniform was a bit rumpled. "Lieutenant Dallas, ma'am, Anthony Dallas, Ship's Supply and Logistics Officer, L6. Five years in service, but it's all been planetside, mostly running supply and logistics chains for Fifth Fleet's groundside units. However, I did serve nine months as a ops ensign in the _Solguard._ I'll keep us up and running, your marines in good armor and your ship in coffee that doesn't taste like garbage. I fear I'm a bit out of practice in the physical department, but I can work out now that I'm not buried in paperwork sixty hours a week."

Shepard nodded. No matter if the guy seemed a bit flaky, anyone good enough to serve in the _Solguard _was bound to be excellent at what they did. Service in that task force was very nearly a holy thing for SA personnel, only the very best could even hope to serve. "I'm afraid I have rather unconventional ideas about how my marines should be equipped, Lieutenant."

He grinned. "So I've heard. BuSups was pissed at you for your stunt in buying armor for your Marines, but I thought it was a great idea. Given how famous you are now, you could probably talk some big shot armor designer into equipping your whole force at reduced cost."

She grinned. "Not a bad idea. We'll come back to that." She turned to the last two figures, sitting a bit apart. "Neither of you are on my crew, but introduce yourselves nonetheless, please."

The older man spoke first. His hair was neatly cut but going a bit gray at the temples, and his features were lined, giving his dark gray eyes a sense of heavy weight. "Captain Michael von Khar, squire of the DMKoA , Marquis of Charleston Beach. I'm the senior destroyer commander of Battle Group Chiron and your squadron XO. Twenty one years of service. I haven't gotten my admiral-designate qualification yet, and I doubt I will given my age, but I'm happy to be of service. My ship is the SDD Mindoir, third gen destroyer hull. I was assigned to the 69 Scout, but I'm happy to be with your group after that ugly fight at Terra Nova. Thank you for picking us up, the Fleet was planning to give us four days repair and send us up against the geth."

Shepard shook her head slowly. "My very first rule is that no one under my command gets fucked by the SA penny-pinching bean counters any more. I've lost too many good soldiers to that shit. Your ship – all the ships under my command, actually – will not leave dock until I am personally satisfied they are ship-shape and each CO is confident at taking them out into a fight."

Captain von Khar nodded. "That's a relief, ma'am. Our duty in the squadron – the destroyers, that is – will probably be as flankers and pressure units, backing up the big guns on your monster of a cruiser. We'll have to sit down and go over tactics once we know what our mission tasking will be."

Shepard nodded, glancing at the other figure. A slender woman with straight blond hair and narrow, almost slanted green eyes, her uniform was immaculate and her posture rigid. "Yes, ma'am. Commander Rachel Gatlin. I'm the senior commander of the frigate group assigned to you. I've been in service for eleven years and this is my first command. My ship is the heavy missile frigate SM Thermopylae. Right now we're also in need of drydock, we're a second-gen class and I'm afraid both our electronics and cooling systems are very much out of date. My crew is mostly newer enlistees, with a handful of officers pulled from ships destroyed in the Battle of the Citadel, so we have a lot of training to do. I'm also pulling double duty as the squadron liaison officer to BuPers, so I'll be vetting applicants to join the crews of the destroyers and frigates in the battle group. I'm very excited to work with you, ma'am. My family was on Dirth when you saved us all."

Shepard smiled. "Your people saved themselves, Commander. I just helped." She exhaled, and pulled up a screen on her desk. "Now that we all know each other...it's time to go over our tasks. Thanks to the fact that our fleet got the shit smacked out of it at the Citadel and Terra Nova, we get to be the tip of the spear for a series of tasks coming straight from President Windsor. But before we can do that, we have to get our shit together."

She brought up a map on the wall, and smiled. "Let's begin."

O-ATTWN-O

The briefing took a good two hours, during which time Shepard began to learn about her new team members.

Cole, like his father, was silent for most of it, only speaking up about what touched on the marine contingent. That hadn't even been put together yet – Cole's impression was that they would be assembled at Pinnacle Station.

Jerred Colms was brilliant and memorized facts instantly, but a touch reactive to perceived criticism. He had lots of ideas, and enough practical experience that he could point out improvements in the planned schedules of tests, but little tolerance for the questions Tali had about how the weapons systems would affect the experimental new mass core of the Kazan.

Liara and Traynor got along wonderfully, but Traynor was both a touch nervous and a bit star-struck. Shepard resolved to work that out of the girl ASAP.

Anthony Dallas, despite his lack of experience on shipboard ops, was the most useful when it came to planning how to load the weapons and make sure the Kazan was supplied properly. He had connections everywhere, and if he was a bit prone to taking shortcuts, she couldn't fault his enthusiasm.

Tali had a long list of things she wanted to check on the Kazan and was clearly impatient to get started, while Joker's only contribution – as usual – was a series of wisecracks and jokes that kept the meeting from getting too boring.

Jiong merely observed, except for a few minor questions regarding ship security.

When it was all said and done, Shepard smiled. "Good work, people. Captain von Khar, Commander Gatlin. Have your ships ready to depart for Pinnacle Station when we get back from our shakedown cruise. We'll tow the Silverfish, since her core is still out. Joker should enjoy that."

Ignoring his rolled eyes, she continued. "The Kazan should be ready for initial inspection tomorrow morning, if this report I have is accurate and not a pile of BuShips BS, which I highly doubt. Assuming it is correct, Pressly, have the crew squared away and ready for departure by 1500. My understanding is that the crew aboard is mostly a skeleton commissioning crew stiffened by officers and enlisted from other ships lost or crippled at the Citadel, so it's up to you to whip them into the kind of team we had on the Normandy. Tali, Liara, Jerred, Anthony – review the officers answering to you and your senior NCO's and flag anyone who can't or won't do the job properly. If anyone has a problem with the way you run things they can get the fuck off my ship."

She turned to Jiong. "I assume we have barracks or staterooms or fucking something assigned to stay in?"

Jiong smiled. "Already handled. Given the situation, I've arranged hotel rooms at the Arcturus Arms until I can work out more permanent arrangements, but I should have everything wrapped up shortly."

She chuckled. "I knew you would be handy. Make sure Tali has anything required for her special needs ready to go by the time we get back."

Tali tilted her head, and Jiong smiled. "I am looking into the possibility of obtaining a certified medic with experience with quarians as well as a clean room, Ms. Zorah. I'll keep you appraised of what I find out."

Tali stammered out her thanks, but Shepard waved it off. "Alright, it's getting late and I'm hungry and tired of being in this damned uniform. Dismissed. Liara, hang around a bit." She smiled as the group filed out, Jiong being the last to go.

The door closed behind him, and Shepard laid her head on the desk. "This is … a big job."

Liara smiled. "It is no less stressful for me, Sara. I fear I will have to do a great deal of work on areas of science I have not paid much attention to. The science suite aboard the Kazan sounds very well equipped, but I do wonder if there will be any resentment from those answering to me about my position, given my lack of – "

Shepard looked up and shook her head. "There better not be, or I'll see if I can keelhaul someone in space. Do not take any shit from the staff working for you, Liara. Hopefully everyone will have enough brains not to fuck with someone who biotically piledrives geth collosi, but if anyone causes trouble, let me know."

Liara gave a wider smile. "I am withdrawn, Sara. That does not mean I am … meek. Perhaps a little of you has rubbed off on me, after all."

Shepard nodded, then grinned. "More than a little, if what we did at the hotel a few days ago is any measure. I could barely fucking walk the next day, Liara."

Liara blushed, but also smirked. "If I had known you would pass out halfway through, Sara, I would have gone slower."

Shepard shivered, then shook her head. "Let's find someplace to eat and relax, evil woman."


	2. Chapter 2 : Motivations

**A/N**: _The focus of this story will mostly be on Shepard and her team, but it will cut away at times to other viewpoints. It won't be the constant shifting perspective of OSABC's final chapters, but some understanding of why things proceed along the lines they do is needed so that people aren't left going "WTF"._

_Most of this chapter focuses on the new OC's – Tyrone Cole, Jarred Colms, and Anthony Dallas. Each one is a unique take on a character Bioware fucked up. I'll leave it up to you to match the OC to the Canon Character. One is obvious, one is subtle, and one is a rather warped interpretation._

_As I've warned before, the earlier chapters are more fluff and exposition than action, but that changes in later Arcs, have no fear._

_Update: 9-25 : Fixed a few typos, although Shepard does have beautiful hips. _

* * *

"_There are two sides to everything … unless the very concept of sides is merely our perception,not reality" _

_– Lady Benezia T'Soni – 'No single raindrop blames itself for the Flood'_

* * *

The SCH Kazan was a beautiful ship.

Shepard felt a sense of satisfaction just looking at the lines of the heavy cruiser. Like most Alliance cruisers, the ship was three blocky wedges arranged in a triangular shape around a center-line hull, four engines melding smoothly with the hull near the back. Unlike most cruisers, however, these engines – gigantic Briggs/Royce Combine hyper-mix thrusters five times larger than the Normandy's engines – were mounted on pivots, allowing vectored thrust and improved ship handling.

The hull was gleaming white, trimmed in Alliance blue and highlights of black. Two bold red stripes ran under the name, surmounted by a gold star, signifying the ship's CO had been twice awarded the Star of Terra. The heavily reinforced bridge sat atop the cruiser's spine, protected by curved sheets of duraplate a good foot thick.

A dizzying array of cables, pipes and hoses ran to and from the ship along the service gantry, a mix of VI-controlled repair bots and dockworkers in off-white one piece worksuits scrambling along the hull. The Kazan was still in drydock, a pressurized work area with atmosphere, but even now the last of the ship-systems were being brought online and a set of mass effect cranes was connecting to the hull, preparing the shift the ship to a deep space berth.

Once she'd only dreamed of space, playing with a battered old model of an Alliance frigate or wondering what it was like to walk among the very stars. Now she was in command of this beautiful ship, and the lives on it were hers to guide and keep safe.

_I will not fail. _

Shepard, after gazing at the ship a bit longer, turned to Pressly standing next to her. "Status?"

The balding XO folded his arms, arching an eyebrow. "Fairly good. Not quite as squared away as the launch of the Normandy, but we're on schedule, at least. Met with the Navigator and Lead CIC Coordinator yesterday, they both seem solid. Tali is already onboard terrorizing the engineering staff, but from her initial report BuShips actually didn't screw anything up with this one. The Tantalus-II core is operating at 6% draw, but she tested it up to 120% with no out-of-band misfires and only one mass disruption, well within safety limits."

Shepard nodded absently. "Of course, we won't know for sure until it has to trigger a relay, will we?" She sighed. "What about the crew?"

Pressly gestured to an open assembly area visible through large windows in the distance, along the far wall of drydock. "NCO's and junior officers are getting them together now. Complement is mostly complete." He pulled out a padd.

"Twenty-eight officers, including you. Two warrant officers – one is down in primary engineering, the other is in weapons. Ninety-six non-commissioned officers, three hundred eleven crew, six fighter pilots, three fighter support officers, thirty nine fighter support and repair staff. The ship's marine company is one company. Ninety soldiers, six officers. First detachment is A-rate marines. Standard formations. Second detachment is a mix of N-level soldiers, DACT, and some info-war scout-snipers. Third detachment is a mix of A-rates and heavy weapons, and fourth is actually a lance of battlesuits – six older Agamemnon suits, and the lance officer is in a Thermopylae suit. All in all, very solid layout."

Shepard tilted her head. "Impressive. Armor assets are always a plus...speaking of which, do we have vehicles?"

Pressly nodded, checking the padd in his hands. "Two MAKO tanks. DACTs will hot drop, the spec-forces have inline drop-pods, but they can fit into the MAKOs if we need conventional drops. The ship is too big to land on a surface but we also have a combat-rated pinnace alongside the fighters."

Shepard smiled widely. The President definitely hadn't skimped on outfitting her with every possible advantage. "Sounds like things are going well. Is everyone accounted for and ready to roll?"

Pressly sighed. "No. We're missing our ship's doctor and the medical staff. Also, Jiong was supposed to have three or four Commissariat types on board, he says they've been delayed. We have enough rated medics on board that I don't think it will be a problem to do the shakedown without them, but we obviously won't be able to test the medical area and trauma center."

She nodded. "Have Dallas inventory the medbay and make sure we have full loads on required medical supplies, and make double goddamned sure we loaded asari and quarian blood plasma and dextro-compatable medicines. I'm _still _pissed General Von Grath stole Chakwas away from me..."

Pressly did not snicker, but made a curious noise in the back of his throat and struggled to conceal a smile. "Yes, ma'am."

Shepard shot him a deadpan look. "Traitor. Anyway, have the crew group up by division, I'm supposed to trot out some kind of speech, I suppose. We get any word yet from the Chief when his people will get the fuck off my ship and we can space this bitch?"

Pressly consulted the padd again. "Another hour. Ship should be clear by 1100. Arcturus has cleared us for departure at 1500, and the destroyer squadron is already in system and waiting. I went ahead and sent the mess deck cooks and deck division on board to prep the ship and make sure lunch is ready to go once the ship's clear."

Shepard nodded. "Alright then. I'll head over to the staging area and .. say something .. speechy. You take care of the rest of it."

Pressly nodded. "No problem, ma'am."

Shepard watched him walk towards the ship, before looking around and finding the nearest mag-lev car, which she hopped aboard. "VI, staging area nine."

The vehicle accelerated smoothly, and Shepard tapped her omni, sending a message to Liara. A few moments later she got her response.

_In staging area nine, Sara. Waiting for you to arrive. Crew is calm. Tali not here. -_

Shepard nodded to herself, and tapped her commlink on the omnitool. "Tali, status."

The quarian's voice sounded aggravated. "The bosh'tets who did a systems check on this ship before testing the engines should be shot, Shepard. None of the fuel lines were pressure tested, and all of them had material leaks. I've already replaced the connectors and retested, but now I'm worried about whatever else we might find."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "Run a system check of the entire fuel system, then, and have your team double check the life-support, HVAC, and cooling. If none of those are jacked up, we can at least get into space without suffocating or dying of heatstroke, or having the ship explode. Once you have those five by five, run a level five check-series on the flight control surfaces and the trunk electrical systems. The rest we can find during the shakedown, that's what it's for anyway."

Tali huffed. "Quarians wouldn't launch ships that weren't 100%."

Shepard grinned. "No, they probably wouldn't. But we humans are dumb. And honestly? I expected problems. As long as they don't affect ship safety, I'm inclined to let them go until we can get a hold of the designers to fix the issues, and not merely have us patch or bypass them. I'm not ignoring the problems, and trust me, I will put my foot up someone's ass for this, but … let's just say we're on a tight schedule. I trust you to handle anything that comes up engineering-wise."

Tali's voice had a slight warble of gratitude. "Thanks, Shepard. This will take another hour or so to sort out, did you need me and the first engineering shift dockside?"

Shepard checked the chrono on her omnitool and spoke. "Nah. You've heard my speeches before anyway. Just make sure if anyone gives you shit you let me know."

Tali didn't say anything for a long moment. "Everyone has been … very respectful. A lot of them ask me things to see how much I actually know, but no one has been rude and they all address me as Lieutenant Commander Zorah. I guess I got used to the informality on the Normandy...should I be calling you Major all the time?"

Shepard snorted. "Hell no. I dragged you with me because Adams and everyone else says you're the best engineer they've seen, and because I know you won't half-ass things. There's a time for unit discipline and proper modes of address, and that's when the brass is hanging around. The rest of the time you can call me Sara for all I care."

The quarian's voice was warm. "Thanks...Sara. I've got to get back to work, but … could we talk a bit once we get going? A-about... Jeff?"

Shepard arched an eyebrow, wondering what that could be about. "Sure, but I'll warn you that I'm not as good at counseling as Wrex was."

Tali laughed as Shepard disconnected, and squared her shoulders. "Time to meet the troops."

O-ATTWN-O

Jerred Colms stood at perfect physical attention as Shepard began speaking to the assembled crew of the Kazan, but he didn't pay much mental attention to her words. He'd seen commissioning speeches before, and if Shepard was a bit more direct and less flowery than other CO's he'd served under, it still wouldn't change the undertones of her speech – work hard, team spirit, rah rah rah. Go Blue.

For a man with a genius level IQ, photographic memory, and twenty-six patents under his belt, Jerred was often underwhelmed by his co-workers, and found very few people to be his actual intellectual peer. It was isolating, in it's own fashion, but it was isolation he selected. He had interacted with people of his own mental level before and come away fascinated by their own flaws and weaknesses, so he knew – intellectually – that he had his own.

He just couldn't see them. Given his past, it wasn't surprising, he supposed. The fact that he was the best weapons engineer in Second Fleet, perhaps in the entire SA, wasn't a matter of pride so much as a forgone conclusion in his mind. He'd been the best all his life. He'd had to be, to pursue his dream.

Top of his classes in college, wooed by every major university on Arcturus and even some from Earth itself. Full scholarships merely on the strength of his test scores. Graduated college at 19, had his doctorate at 22, founded a company at 23 and sold it for twenty million at 25. He'd signed up with the military both to challenge himself and to put him in a place to further his dream, rather than out of any patriotic duty, and he'd torn through the ranks at a meteoric pace. He'd never married but dallied with the daughters of famous business moguls and senators, and made connections that would aid him in breaking the last boundaries of the military.

He was well on target to hit commander and qualify for his own ship after this tour, and after that the Admiralty beckoned. He had no doubt in his ability to achieve it, his natural talent and aggressive pursuit of his chosen vocation had impressed those near the top of the Alliance military for years. But he didn't push himself out of any ambition for power or glory, or even money.

His only true ambition – one that had driven him nearly his entire life – was developing the next generation of weapons, ones so _terrible_, so _powerful_, that his name would be immortalized. Ones that would ensure humanity wouldn't be the damned underdog.

Ones would ensure no other people went through what he did.

He could never forget the fire pouring out of the sky when he was seven years old, trapped on Watson with his parents during the pirate attack, watching so many Alliance marines and civilians die even as their weapons did little against the incoming horde. Never forgot those needle-teeth batarians laughing as they shot anything in their path.

Watching his parents come apart in front of his very eyes, splashing him with their lifeblood as they'd hidden him away from the pirates at the cost of their lives.

The SA had built up Watson since then, with missile bases and defenses and fleets, but that day he'd decided he wouldn't have to ever go through that feeling again. It became his passion, and drove him towards his current path. Everyone had a passion, and his was in the understanding of the fundamental forces of physics and energy that made space combat possible.

He couldn't bring back his parents. He couldn't undo the privation he'd had to endure, being orphaned, dropped on Arcturus by some oversight in the refugee care system. But he could apply his brilliance to the root cause of the issue, and derive satisfaction and fulfillment from knowing that one day, when pirates attacked, or war broke out, or the geth came again, that they would taste and know defeat, written in the particle beams and accelerated mass packets that were his design

Then his parents could rest. Only then would he feel comfortable pursuing his businesses again, or trying to build a family.

Passions were what drove people. And with that understanding in his mind, he knew that Shepard – driven by her own passions – would be a key part of his own goals. She had a skill that he didn't, one that he needed. That alone would have sparked his interest, but she offered more. She had connections, she had power, she had the eye of the galaxy on her. If he could sway her thinking towards his, then his goals would be brought about that much faster.

But what to think of her? He watched her move across the stage. A beautiful woman, but supposedly ice cold and lethal. Rumors, stories, and presumptions surrounded her, obscuring whatever the truth was of his new CO.

He didn't care much about Shepard's background, her reportedly icy personality, her vicious combat style or even the gauche rumors swirling about her command ability. So she had gotten a bunch of no-account jarheads killed on some icy rock? Marines were a dime a dozen, siphoned off from the poor from the arcologies and the restless from the colonies. If getting the job required their sacrifice, wasn't that what the SA Marine Code stood for?

Nor did he care much for the fact she had stopped a major galactic threat. That's what heroes and Spectres and those kind of people did, after all. If not Shepard, then Branson, or some other gun-toting ape with more muscles than brains. He was thankful in a disassociated way, of course, and it was useful in that it gave her greater influence, but it wasn't what drew his attention.

Her social rank was irrelevant, given that it was just handed to her. She could use that in time, but not now, and given the political issues on Earth right now, not in the near future. She was astonishingly good looking, but he was always honest with himself about attractions and sex, and she just wasn't his type, to be honest. Besides, there was a sense of awkwardness and playfulness in her interactions with the asari woman that hinted she was already involved.

None of that mattered anyway. He'd pushed and angled for this job not because Shepard was a fearsome warrior, or connected politically, or had saved the galaxy, or even due to her beauty. He'd taken it because he'd been one of the few people to see the blueprints of the Oracal Demolitions InciNdiary shotgun she'd designed, the ODIN.

It was, to him, a work of art and beauty. Savage, unrefined, built for nothing less than the utter demolition of whatever it struck. And then he'd found out Shepard had designed dozens of other weapons, but had never submitted any of them. She'd fallen away from that work in the aftermath of the ODIN's unsavory reputation, the collapse of Oracal Demolitions, and her own issues, whatever they were.

The ODIN was a teasing hint into her ability. A weapon that could, if widely deployed, make a mockery of charging biotics, stubborn krogan, or heavily armored turians. He could and had developed weapons for ground use before, but compared to her design they were clumsy and inelegant. What could she do if they worked together, he filling any gaps in her deeper understanding of the mechanics, she using that astonishing creativity? Could she aid him in designing space weaponry as well, or even entirely new weapons concepts?

It was a heady thought, and one that drove him to literally crush every other applicant for this position, unleashing the full force of his genius and education for the first time in years. And when she'd casually shown that slovenly supply officer what she needed to build a new kind of sniper rifle, off the cuff and drawn on a napkin, he'd known that his idea would work. She had not lost her skill even after all these years.

He was sure that, with the proper prodding, he could get her to design weapons like that again. A mind like that was criminally wasted on gallivanting about shooting thugs. She could, with the proper guidance and assistance, help influence the next wave of weapons design for the Alliance Military. And help him with his own dreams.

His friends, few as they were, said he was obsessed with weapons – a fair complaint. But everyone, in his experience, was obsessed with something. Some with money, or sex, or power, or acceptance. Obsession was what made people tick, and it was how Jerred was able to break down and manipulate those around him.

And he would have to do the same to Shepard, he saw now. She wasn't someone who just accepted people blindly. He searched for clues of how to begin, watching her as she paced back and forth across the platform, her voice ringing with conviction.

Despite her habit of blanking her face and concealing her emotions, the Shepard he saw in the briefing room – and the one addressing the crew – was not a truly emotionless person. She was someone who didn't understand emotions and their responses entirely, but was trying to. He'd seen many people like that – researchers, focused on the next big thing. Tired worn out soldiers, too battered to process any longer. People who'd lost their way, either by disconnection from humanity or focus on something too clinical to maintain the bonds that kept them human.

Jerred was sure that the woman had lost her way simply because she had nothing to protect, nothing to fight for. It was clear in hearing her talk now to the crew, her protectiveness. This was a woman who had fled from contact with other people because she had to throw them away to achieve her goals, and was tired of it.

He gave a thin smile. People made too much of a fuss over deciphering other people. Groups like Terra Firma screamed about the alien and how different they were, but he'd worked with enough asari and salarians to realize they simply looked at life different. They weren't strange, just _different. _They ate, slept, laughed, cried, and feared. Bigotry towards them was a waste of time when you could instead take advantage of that different viewpoint to see things you'd otherwise miss.

Likewise, he didn't put much stock into so-called 'first impressions' and judging people by their pasts or rumors. No one let you see the real person on a first impression, so all you saw was the mask put up to present an idealized image. You had to see past that, over time and through watching their actions and reactions, to see anything worth analyzing. And people changed. If past behavior was an ironclad determinant of future actions, understanding people would be simpler, but it never worked that way.

People emphasized the wrong things in what they looked at in others, and then were shocked when their badly placed beliefs turned out wrong. Jerred was a master of that, using people's misconceptions to both understand how and why they thought that way, and to cloak his own disdain for most people.

As Shepard continued to speak, he reassessed everything he knew about her. Biotic, which gave her a measure of separation from normal humans. Bad childhood, criminal past – probably burdened with guilt, and yet more pragmatic than normal people clinging to childish beliefs. Lifelong military, compounded by her status as a Z2 – no life outside of the SA military, then. No real chance to relax and enjoy herself. No real understanding of social concepts the military never included. Loyal to her friends – fiercely so. Past betrayal by someone close? Or merely clinging to those few who saw past the scars?

Most importantly, and something he suspected most people missed – a fear of failure. Whether driven by her past failings and betrays, or by her isolation in a military culture and her biotic background, she was driven by the need not to fail those who mattered to her. That much was writ large in everything he knew about her, from her military record, the small number of people who truly knew her, the attention to detail in the briefing – even the sheer flawless nature of her uniform. It was the cause of the protectiveness he had noticed. She pursued perfection through hard work, and would only respect people who did the same, not out of wanting to be the best, but fear of not being good enough.

_Yes. _

He nodded to himself, keeping the smile on his face as his thoughts clicked together in his head. Now he knew how to approach her. Relying on his natural genius would alienate her or make her feel stupid. Better to present himself as a hard worker, long hours, determination. She was probably not yet comfortable with her new rank and titles – make a show of being unused to such and ask if she preferred formal or informal address. Obviously not used to small talk or getting to know people – use interest in weapons as common ground, downplay past and focus on wanting the best to protect 'her people'. She wouldn't care much about his own tragedies...but protecting , that she would like.

His smile widened, even as his eyes narrowed. She would be the kind of woman who didn't coddle people, expected them to step up, show their value. He wouldn't wait for her to task him with work but make aggressive suggestions.

If he played his cards right, she'd grow comfortable with him, and once he was assured that when he spoke she would listen, he'd share his dream.

O-ATTWN-O

Standing at something like attention on the other side of the line of officers in front of the crew, Anthony Dallas was, he concluded, bored. His nose itched, and he couldn't scratch it without breaking attention. Shepard wasn't a martinet, not based on the words coming out of her mouth, but he didn't intend to give her a bad impression any more than he already had.

He just wanted to scratch his nose so he could be comfortable.

Much of his life had been spent in the pursuit of mediocrity and contentment. Too poor to afford college, tired of being little more than a wage slave in decaying economy in the Miami Arcology, he'd had both ambition and drive in his youth, joining the SA in a patriotic fury, mastering the skill sets thrown at him. He had only been a ops tech for a month before he was tapped for OCS, graduating as an ensign and ready to face the galaxy.

The proudest day of his life was when he'd been selected to join the ranks of the _Solguard_, the elite defenders of Sol itself.

He'd worked hard, driving himself to fifteen hour days mastering his job, and spent nine months pushing that forward. Then the budget cuts came, and there was a force reduction, and despite all his hard work, his sweat and pride, he was cut, shipped off to Grissom Station on Mars, and stuck on monitoring airspace defense nets.

It affected him, greatly. He couldn't bring himself to push himself again, knowing it would amount to nothing in the end. Why bother?

It had been mere luck that got him saddled with double duty as supply officer of the facility, the original qualified officer dying in a freak suit accident. He'd done his job the best he could, losing himself in the minutia of the supply and logistics system to stave off despair and boredom.

Then he'd gotten a few requests for some 'off the books' supplies from one of the regimental combat teams. Rather than deny it, he pushed it through, covering it in the annual resupply confusion, mostly because the cute redheaded sergeant that had asked him for it had a nice ass and he figured he could talk her into a date for repayment.

He quickly discovered the supply officer of the base had more power than he thought. He was the one who managed to get extra suits of armor or medipaks when the budget didn't allow it, or upgrade the coffee from milspec to a civilian blend that didn't taste like oil sludge. He was the one who threw together 'supply security' details that allowed the bored marines to get back to Mars City and party for forty eight hours.

Trading little favors for other favors or an increasingly wide set of sexual conquests made him reconsider his position, and he threw himself a bit more into mastering logistics, eventually applying for a service transfer. Here, as in other future postings, his tour with the _Solguard _convinced people he was more skilled than he seemed.

He spent four years bouncing around comfortable duty stations. He didn't consider himself corrupt so much as flexible. He didn't sell SA material to outside sources, or anything criminal like that. But he wasn't averse to letting bored marines slip their own shipments into the supply paks, things like cigarettes, alcohol, even marijuana. He made plenty of connections with various duty officers, mid rank base officers, attaches – anyone who might need extra supplies here, or a cover for some office romance or a quick getaway.

He'd decided at some point that being the best was a shell game. You could bust your ass and still lose, despite how much effort you put into it. He focused instead on being satisfied with life and being comfortable. He stashed away the small bribes he got, used his connections to get him the kinds of postings that would keep him safe and comfy, and messed around with a handful of women who repeatedly needed his 'help' with the sort of things he could reroute.

When the transfer to Fifth Fleet's ground-side bases came along, he certainly didn't fight it – being stationed on Bekenstein was a blast,and supply runs to the Citadel were the holy grail of less-than-textbook supply officers. Bekenstein's marine contingent also had a fair number of asari in it, and he'd spent maybe a bit too much time learning about the wonders of going blue.

In fact, he'd spent so much time messing with asari girls that he'd stopped paying attention to transfer orders coming through the system. He'd been caught flatfooted by the sudden transfer to the Kazan, but he didn't even have time to try to fight the transfer before two Commissars had arrived at his duty station to 'escort him'. That had lead to a completely terrifying conversation with a Commissar in a lift-chair named Jiong, whose smile reminded Dallas of a cat gazing upon a crippled mouse.

He shuddered when he recalled the conversation.

"You are no doubt wondering why a man of your middling skills and fairly low rank would be picked to serve as Supply and Logistics for a command as prestigious as this, Lieutenant Dallas." Jiong had tapped a finger on a padd, scrolling a long list of line items Dallas recognized as cargo transactions. "Especially given your … non-compliant attitude towards shipment integrity and filing factual supply transportation manifests."

The man's smile had turned icy. "The Commissariat is everywhere, and we know everything. We did not act before this because, truly, the mischief you've achieved is minor compared to less wise supply officers who actually sold SA material to pirates. They are all dead. Your acts, however 'harmless', have possibly damaged unit readiness and exposed security flaws within our system, and the accounting for such is now coming due."

Jiong tapped the screen again. "You can do one of two things at this point. Through either scraps of what you call charm or the weak-minded nature of others, you have enough connections that,in normal circumstances, you could weasel out of this reassignment. If you do so – if you even attempt to do so – you will be arrested by the Commissariat, branded a traitor to the state, chemically castrated, shot, and thrown in a ditch to fertilize the crops on some class I farming commune." He paused. "I threw the castration in there just to be vicious."

"Or, you could accept your job with good grace, and use your … non-standard methods of acquisition and materials handling to procure non-standard and possibly illegal items for Major Shepard. She has a very … different view of how to equip her marines, and while I have every confidence that her ideas are sound, others differ in opinion. Rather than listen to their objections and be forced to assemble what she requires in piecemeal, your skills will let us do so undetected. One cannot object, after all, to that which is unknown."

Dallas had found his voice, somehow. "You want me to procure illegal weapons and armor, mods, ammo? Combat drugs? For the Butcher? Or else you kill me?"

Jiong smiled again. "An admirable summation, minus the fact that you will also need to obtain various black-market materials. Shepard likes polonium in her ammo loads, but was commenting that uranium hexafloride might be better."

Dallas stared at him in horror. "That's against Citadel law! SA law! Fuck, that would set off every radsafe alarm – "

Jiong tapped the pad. "Any man who can smuggle asari call girls, an entire pallet of nose candy, enough alcohol to disable an elcor, and not only get it through undetected but have the charges rerouted to pay for the call girls should be able to smuggle a little ammo."

So, Dallas was stuck.

But when he'd actually seen Shepard up close, he wondered how bad that really was. It wasn't like he minded the job, as long as it was safe. He'd not been a Shepard fanboy, exactly, but he'd kept up with her career like a lot of Marines did. Some Marines hated her for getting a lot of her men killed, but many more admired her for putting her foot up major batarian ass, and bitch-slapping the shit out of Saren had only made them cheer harder.

He admired her mostly for the fact that she could make a set of Cobalt Armor look sexy.

Like most people who didn't know her and could only see the public face, she had seemed icy and distant, a beautiful war goddess that didn't have time for shit like emotions or fear. The breathless and riveting newscasts of her fight against Saren across half a dozen locations had only emphasized that – shots of her cutting through geth, taking out Cerberus guys, all the stories coming off Noveria.

The grainy shots of her fight with Benezia, alongside the asari chick and what he finally realized was the same Commissar Jiong that had shanghaied him, was like something you'd see in an action movie. He'd known asari were powerful, but Jesus.

And Shepard had survived that. So, he was ambivalent about things. Sure, the days of six hour work days, cushy offices, banging girls from the supply cadre or hooking up with that hot asari sergeant in the 8th Armor were over, but he figured he'd get a nice promotion from this. With the big geth ship blown up and the rest running, he doubted Shepard or her ship would be in any real danger.

Then he'd met her and been briefed on what she wanted, and his eyes had nearly fallen out of his head. She wasn't as icy as he'd thought, laughing and smiling just like anyone else. And she was even more fucking gorgeous up close, he had to seriously make sure he didn't check her out too much.

But what had blown his mind were her plans for equipping her marines. She had an in with the manufacturers of Colossus Armor, and she wanted them to custom design marine combat suits. She wanted turian rifles, instead of SA ones, and she wanted salarian grenades. She wanted to retrofit the entire force with omni-shields and omni-blades. And she'd sketched out an idea of a custom rifle she wanted built for the scout-snipers – one she'd basically invented!

He'd be very, very busy. Pulling all this together, keeping it out of the sights of Alliance Logistical Review Command, bypassing customs and finding a smuggler to get a hold of shit like lance cannons and Phaeston rifles – that would be a pain in the ass. The rest of the shit on her list made even less sense, especially an off the record bone and tissue regen system, kinetic silencing dampeners for her quarters, and a medical support robot with codelocks on the VI.

He decided then and there he Did Not Need to Know, and had promised her he'd get it together ASAP. Jiong had given him a wink at that, and he couldn't stop from shuddering at the idea of chemical castration.

_Death was bad enough, but castration? Fucking really? _

And now they were about to head out. He'd already gotten on SASLNet, the logistics system of the SA, and had been calling in favors all day. He'd carefully approached Jiong and suggested that some of what they wanted would be easier to get with Commissariat approval, and was stunned when the man gave him a Commissariat Override PIN. That would allow him to classify and obscure many of the requests he made, with only another Commissar able to see past.

He'd been aboard the ship, briefly – he had nice quarters, not lavish but nice, and his own office – even a staff, a knockout blond bombshell, two cute redheads and a brunette he knew from Bekenstein who'd he'd already slept with . This wasn't so bad, really. Either Jiong was making this easy on him, or he'd just gotten lucky. All in all, this would work out fine. Hell, he might even get promoted from it all.

It wasn't so bad. Except the threat of castration. And having to get back into shape. And shave every day. Still. He could make this work.

Now, where could he get his hands on a goddamned medical VI bot?

O-ATTWN-O

Tyrone Cole smiled faintly as he stood at perfect attention, half his attention on Shepard's speech, the other half on memories.

He wasn't really sure why he was here, if he was honest with himself, and every Cole knew that not being straight with yourself was a ticket that lead bad places. He told himself it was due to the last message from his father, but a part of him was still .. uncertain.

His grandaddy had been a Z1 convict with an addiction to sand and heroin, who'd knocked up his grandma before getting his legs blown off by gangers in the Chi-Town Arcology. After that he'd settled down, marrying Grandma and trying to turn his life around from a rickety wheelchair and zero education.

He didn't know about Momma's parents when he was growing up – she never said anything about them, and asking Uncle Albert had resulted in the old man boxing his ears and telling him to mind his schoolwork. Papa had always gotten an ugly, angry look on his face whenever he'd asked, but never gave him any answers either.

Wasn't until was grown and had access to the extranet he learned the truth – they'd been criminals, a lot worse than his grandaddy. Slavers.

His mom and dad had met in the SA military, and when his mom was medically discharged after losing an arm on Binthos IX, they'd gotten married and had three kids. Tyrone was the eldest, his younger brother Anthony being the smart one and little Jessica going into news-casting. Tyrone, big like his dad and nearly as tough, had signed up for the infantry as soon as he hit 18.

He loved the SA, loved the Blue, loved knowing he was fighting for his family. The stains of the family's criminal past drove his own dad to be literally perfect at everything. It made him a hard man to please, a man who would drive himself to drinking and ignoring his family for long deployments. Greg Cole breathed and lived the SA even more than Tyrone did, and it wasn't until after Torfan and Mindoir that he loosened up a bit.

Tyrone loved his dad, patterning his whole life after his. He wanted to see his dad grin and fling his arm around him, to hear him bragging about 'my boy' to his buddies on Eden Prime. Moving there had cost the family almost everything they saved up, but Tyrone was happy. His momma was happy, Anthony was graduating college and headed to get his doctorate at the University of Chicago, and Jessica had been accepted as an intern with Westerlund News.

Then the geth had come to Eden Prime. Tyrone had been on leave, accompanying Jessica on her trip to Earth when the news had broken. They saw the tower they called home blown in half, bodies tumbling through the sky, black clouds of smoke marring the perfect blue skyline. They watched, crying, as the fields burned.

Tyrone had never prayed much, but he'd fallen to his knees and begged God to let his family live. When he got the message from his momma that she and Anthony had been at Tower Nine shopping and were fine, he'd cried like a baby. When his dad had finally gotten off a TTG message that he was still alive and assigned to Commander Shepard's ship, he'd whooped with joy.

He'd been serious about his military career before, but he kicked it in high gear now. He'd been tapped for OCS just as Shepard was beating the shit out of the geth on Therum,and he'd managed to keep track of the Normandy's fights even while busting his ass in Officer Training. Seven hard months of learning tactics, training, and war-fighting. Working with armor units, gaining new skills.

When he was done, he planned to see if he couldn't get assigned to the Normandy, and fight along side his dad. The old man would get a kick out of being ordered around by his own son.

He'd gotten a message from Dad on Thessia, a video mail – expensive and rare. He'd kept it with him and played it nearly every day, just to hear his dad's voice.

"Tyrone. Here on Thessia, got a bit of downtime. Things are starting to cool off, I think, now that we killed that skank and her boyfriend, so I thought I'd shoot you a line or two. Heard from my pals in BuPers you went OCS – good. I'm damned proud of you, son. Never forget that."

"It's funny, how this trip has gone. Never thought I'd go from pushing boots on Eden Prime to fighting geth, Cerberus and crazy asari tramps. I'm waiting for something to go wrong – I figure that we haven't found that black ship yet, so this shit isn't over."

"No matter what happens, boy, I want you to promise me two things. Take care of Marlene, Anthony and Jessica, if something happens to me. I've spent my days trying to clean off the shame of what Dad pulled when he was my age, and so has Marlene. Now, with all the shit that's happened, I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with you. Telling you how proud I am of the man you've become. I never gave much thought to dying until I came on this trip, but I've got a feeling something bad is yet to come, so you make me proud one more time and take care of your family."

"Second thing. We're both soldiers, Tyrone. We both know that we can get taken out any day of the week. Could die doing something damnfool stupid, like those crazy DACT who are gonna splatter themselves over a rock one day. I don't do bits and pieces, and I never did anything like that. I don't want you to either...but I got something preying on my mind I can't get out."

"Had a conversation with Shepard not long back. It's hard to watch a soldier like her hurting, and knowing there's nothing you can do. She told me she just wanted to die, sometimes, to get taken out and buried so that all the pain would end. I've been where she is. You get there by not remembering that you're not alone. If something does happen to me, and Shepard makes it out alive … she needs a Cole there to back her up. With any luck, nothing will happen. But if it does...remind her she's not alone, boy. And remember that you aren't either. I'll always be with you, alive or dead."

"Bah, enough depressing bullshit. Ain't nothing alive badass enough to kill me, anyway. You take care of yourself. When we get done, you and I will hit the Citadel and get loud. Or maybe come back here to Thessia." His father had grinned, panning the camera pickup to one side, as an asari barely wearing anything walked past.

"Damn shame I'm married."

His father's single good eye had stared out of that message, locking onto his own. "I love you, boy. Tell your brother to stop messing around with that hussy from Tower Six, and I'll be back home in a few weeks. Make me proud."

That had been it. He bit his lip, remembering how happy he'd been to hear those words.

"I'm proud of you."

Then the news from Virmire had come in. The grim visage of Commander Shepard, her face pale, eyes reddened and grieving, describing the fall of Master Chief Gregory Cole. His mother had collapsed, crying and shaking, his siblings had wept and needed a strong hand. The other, more distant family members, awkwardly coming by to offer condolences. The empty steel coffin, the droning voice of the pastor as he'd spoken. Turning the silver star in the narrow window of their new apartment to the blue side.

He couldn't let himself fall apart, like Momma. He'd kept his eyes dry, and been their rock. He handled the burial, the payments, the insurance. He'd moved money around and made sure everything was okay financially. He'd gotten Momma to see a psychologist, spent time with Anthony and Jessica, telling them they'd make it through.

And then he'd put on his dad's expression, and finished his OCS. Before he'd just been determined, now he was driven. He'd beaten out everyone for the position of honor cadet, first in his class, graduate with honors. They'd told him he could request pretty much any posting he wanted, and so sent his request into BuPurs – request assignment to active duty with Commander Shepard.

He knew, watching the news after the battle of the Citadel, they were going to put her somewhere, and he planned to be there. When it came back approved, he'd just packed his bags and left.

Now he was here. He'd seen the look of sorrow and grief on Shepard's face – and more surprisingly, on that of the asari and even the Commissar. He knew it hurt Shepard just to look at him, and see his father's eyes, his father's cheekbones. Their voices were similar, even. A tiny, immature part of him liked that. Served her right for getting his dad killed.

But he knew she hadn't. She was angry at herself, he could see that much, but the pain in that first glance told him that blaming her wouldn't do any more damage than she'd already done to herself. Oddly enough, it had been the Commissar who'd taken him aside after the briefing to explain.

"Major Shepard admired your father greatly, Lieutenant. I think everyone on the Normandy did. He was the most … perfect NCO I'd ever seen, less a mortal and more like duty made flesh. He died in a fashion that was horrifying...and he died with defiance on his lips, making sure the bomb that prevented Lady Benezia's army from being even more overwhelming went off. If not for his sacrifice, I fear the assault on the Citadel would have ended in her victory."

The Commissar had fixed his cold gaze on Tyrone. "I have no clue what drove you to pick this assignment, Lieutenant. But I will say one thing, and you should listen. Do not get yourself killed. Shepard hasn't forgiven herself for your father's death, nor the death of Lieutenant Alenko, the man setting the bomb your father died protecting. Despite her great strength, in many ways she is .. fragile. For you to die in a pointless act would be too much to bear, I think, even for her."

Tyrone had only nodded. "I don't intend to die, Commissar-Captain. I'm here to fuck up some geth and make sure I follow my dad's last request, to take care of the business he couldn't. There was a Cole at the start of this mess, and there will be a Cole here to finish it."

Jiong had raised an eyebrow. "Finish what, exactly? Saren and Benezia are dead, N...the geth ship in pieces."

Tyrone folded his arms. "The Prez didn't give Shepard all this firepower and backup because things were looking like rainbows and clouds. I don't know what's up, but I know my gut is telling me more shit is headed down the pipeline. Am I wrong?"

The Commissar had given a sudden, chilling grin. "Much like your father, you see more clearly than most, Lieutenant. You are not wrong. But keep my words in mind as you follow your father's wishes. I have no doubts he would also not want you to die if it can be avoided."

Tyrone took a deep breath, swallowing, and watched Shepard finish up her speech. It didn't really matter what was coming. Dad always said that you couldn't hold yourself in the past over bullshit that no one could change. He was here to do what he'd been asked, and if that meant being the baddest motherfucker in the valley of the shadow of death, he was ready.

O-ATTWN-O

Shepard exhaled as she finished her little speech, and glanced over her crew. "Alright. As I said, I'm not one for long ass speeches. You know what you are expected to do, and what I expect from you. I will not be happy until any enemy that even sees the Kazan pisses themselves in fear, and to get there each of you is just as important as I am."

"Fall out by division and stand by for the dock rats to clear off. You have three hours to get your shit together and on board. We are leaving at 1500 sharp, and if you miss ship's movement you won't answer to me, but to Commissar Jiong."

The Commissar patted his flame unit with a happy smile, and Shepard smothered a grin when she saw more than one sailor or officer shudder. "Then get to it, Kazan. Dismissed."

She turned to Jiong as the crew broke up into groups, and arched an eyebrow. "Everything ready?"

Jiong nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I've taken the liberty of ensuring the Arcturus media think the launch is at 2000 hours. My sec-team from the Commissariat will be here in one hour, we'll do a walk-through of the ship before launch. I don't expect any issues."

Shepard nodded. "Did you speak with Lieutenant Dallas about the … items I spoke of for my quarters?"

Jiong nodded. "Yes. If anyone can get them, he can. There are more than a few corrupt supply officers in the ranks, but that man is an artist. He's perfect. Slimy, but very creative and he hasn't really broken any laws that would make me have to kill him. I've indulged his tastes in terms of his supply crew and general laziness, but I'm keeping an eye on him. A more conventional supply officer would be useless for what you require - both for the marines and for your … privacy issues."

Shepard shrugged. "It's one thing for the Normandy crew to know about it, another for the entire crew of a cruiser. We'll be discreet."

Jiong sighed, gesturing to a line-car in the distance. "Your discretion is roughly on par with your elocution, Major. I despair at ever augmenting either of them to endurable levels."

She laughed. "And you still need to speak plainly, Black Hat. No one else complains about how I talk."

Jiong rolled his eyes. "Who else would dare?"


	3. Chapter 3 : Pain and PRIDE

**A/N:** _This is a chapter that some will disagree with. After the next chapter, the action picks up a little. Like I said, there's fluff and character building in this linking piece.  
_

_Alfred Jiong is the most difficult of my various OC's to write. Jiong's poise, intelligence, and seeming perfection is a mask worn over a deeply unhappy, badly wounded man unable to be himself. An exploration of that and other characters is something I almost did in the first story but found no real opening for, so it's only logical I do so here. _

_If at the end you don't hate the SA just a little more... ha.  
_

_As for Shepard's actions at the last, well … Progman reminded me that symbols can be chains as well as reminders. I originally intended for it burn in the wreckage of the Normandy as it crashed on Alchera, but that, in hindsight, would have sent exactly the wrong message. I owe Progman for helping me to pick the right time.  
_

_The Kazan is a heavy cruiser, pretty much almost a pocket battle-cruiser. It wasn't influenced by turian designs, and that will show in the layout of the ship. Visualize it as similar but larger than a standard Alliance cruiser. I'm drawing up the deck plans now, I'll post them on my logicalpremise dot org site later.  
_

_As an aside: Kazan is not only a beautiful city in Russia, but the name of a fascinating book. Check Wikipedia. _

* * *

"_You can pay a soldier to fire a gun. You can pay him to charge the enemy and take a hill. But you can't pay him to believe."_

– _Admiral Steven Hackett, 'On Conversations with a Hero'_

* * *

"This is Major-Commander Sara Shepard, KoUE, commanding officer of Battle Group Chiron. By order of the Systems Alliance Admiralty, Special Operations, Arcturus Command and Presidential Order 16630, I hereby take command of the Systems Alliance Heavy Cruiser Kazan."

Shepard turned to the dockside commander standing in the hatchway. "Commander Johanson, you stand relieved. I have the deck and the conn. VI, log the time."

Shepard smiled as the man bowed and stepped aside, allowing her to step onto her new command for the first time. She'd spent the past hour or so going over all the blueprints and layouts, but she had to see it for herself before she would feel comfortable.

Unlike the Normandy, the entry dock on the Kazan was a single wide airlock nine feet wide and ten feet tall, large enough to allow even battle suits to exit. A matching airlock was on the other side of the ship, both connected to an armored tube that bisected the fourth deck. The tube was lined with security stations, turrets, barricades and static defenses to prevent hostile boarders.

The rest of the fourth deck, accessible by blast doors on the aft wall, was given over to the marines. Sleeping areas, a firing range, the ship's armory, and the staging and cargo area for the ship's battlesuits and MAKO tanks was on this deck, along with offices of the ship's Battle Duty Officer and Command Master Chief. Forward of the tube was storage for armor, workshops for repairs to the vehicles and suits, and a large briefing area for all hands comms.

Two elevators flanked the doorway. Shepard stepped inside the portside elevator, tapping the haptic panel to take her to deck one. Deck two was crew quarters, the galley, wardroom, kitchen, food storage, ship's lounge, exercise areas, and the medbay. Deck three was officer and NCO country, and the science labs. The damage control shop and weapons battery were also there along with sensors and other electronics. Deck five was the core reactor, cargo bay and engineering, and deck six was only a half deck containing the ships hydroponics area, life support systems, and bulk storage. The other half of deck six was partially open to space, the docking area for fighters and the pinnace, as well as the racks of drop pods for the troops.

Deck one was a combination of the bridge, CIC, and her stateroom and offices. Almost three times the size of the Normandy CIC, the forward area of the room was narrowly triangular in shape, rather than the more curved shape of the turian-flavored Normandy. The front of the deck was the pilot's deck, where Joker and two sub-pilots maneuvered the ship. Directly aft of that was Ops Alley, thirty stations of ECM and sensor operators, curved chairs angled up to face triple panels of haptic screens and displays.

The deck opened sharply after Ops Alley into the CIC proper. The center of the room was the plot, a circular display surrounded by the stations of the weapons operators, the front dominated by the weapons officer's master control panel. Rather than the rather grandiose looking 3-D galaxy map of the Normandy it featured flat haptic displays of the relays, augmented with floating representations of the Kazan and contacts surrounding it.

The port and starboard sides of the room held huge armaglass portals under independent kinetic barriers, allowing a vast view of the outside of the ship, flanked by large haptic display screens. Two banks of consoles were set off several feet from the screens. The port set of consoles was the station of the Science officer and staff, linked to the ships powerful sensor array and collection of probes. The starboard panels had small stations for the comms officer, the duty engineer, and onboard security.

The back wall of the room was taken up by the CO's command station, the two elevators, emergency damage control stations, and the corridor towards her quarters and stateroom.

The ceilings were lower in the Normandy CIC – here , angled rows of displays curved around the elevated CO platform, giving her an instant glance at engine power, core status, shield levels, power distribution, communications and more. A comfortable seat automatically elevated from the ground to snap in place as she approached, a slender shelf splitting apart on top of station to display a computer interface and a collection of ship communications circuits, as well as a simplified repeater that would allow basic course changes, speed control, shield status, and weapons fire.

She glanced around the CIC, noting that already the techs had everything running, and Liara was already standing at the science station, her arms folded and her expression one of fierce concentration as she listened to the enlisted man next to her, pointing out displays. She smiled as she walked past, up through ops alley toward the bridge and pilot area.

Heavy armaplast windows curved sharply around the nose of the room, with two seats sunk into the decking and the main pilot station elevated a good foot. Already ensconced in the chair was Joker, his hands moving almost too fast to follow as he went through prelaunch checklists. "Hey, Commander. I mean, Major. Shit. What's up?"

Shepard snickered. "Checking up on you, Joker."

Joker pulled his hat down a bit and brought up a fuel display on one floating haptic panel. "Anderson used to do that. I know what I'm doing. Brilliance requires focus, and you are disturbing my chi." He nodded sagely to himself, and Shepard shook her head with a small smile at his antics.

The pilot to the left, a slender man with brown hair trimmed close to his skull and a scar on his cheek, snickered. "Major, was the Flight Commander always this full of shit?"

Shepard folded her arms. "He grows on you, Ensign Hemsley. Much like fungus." She glanced at the other pilot, a young woman with flat black hair and Asiatic features. "Seriously, everything is nominal? We already had one issue that would have caused some problems on launch."

The other pilot gave a quick nervous nod, her eyes not straying from her displays. "Yes, ma'am! Secondary flight surfaces reporting green across the board. Dock umbilici one through nine disconnected and visual inspection shows all ports sealed."

Joker tapped a control. "Fuel systems are nominal – thank Tali for me, it would have been no fun flying while on fire from fuel leaks, assuming we didn't, you know, explode. I have main control, Ensigns Hemsley and Li An will be handling secondary maneuver control." He paused. "This seat is kinda stiff, any chance for an upgrade? Or at least a coffee holder?"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "No. I'll be in my stateroom if anyone is looking for me, not that they'd come up here. When we clear all checks, go ahead and set course for the relay. I'm all speeched out for the day. Let Pressly make the 1MC announcement."

Joker nodded. "Yes, Major. See? Learning?"

Pilot Hemsley just blinked. "And I thought I was flaky."

Joker hissed. "You are."

Shepard let the three pilots continue to bicker as she turned on a heel and walked back down the Ops Alley, pausing to nod at Pressly as she passed. "Jiong already on board?"

The big man nodded, scowling at a display before turning to face her fully. "Yes, ma'am, in your stateroom. We're about done with the pre-flight level nine checklist. I just need to finish getting the watch sections squared away and we'll be ready for pullout. The cranes will be moving us to hard space in five. We just need launch clearance and for you to authorize drive release."

Shepard nodded. "Good job. Joker will take us out when it's time, alert the crew if you would, I'll be occupied with Jiong."

She smiled at his nod, walking further aft, glancing over the communication stations and the stiff stance of Ensign Traynor. "Something wrong, Ensign?"

Traynor, absorbed in her displays, gave a slight start of fright, eyes wide. "N-no ma'am. Just running through the countermeasures testing sequences we have. There...ah, there's a communications circuit routed to your stateroom I don't have access to."

Shepard nodded. "Yes. I know. I'm afraid you don't have clearance."

Traynor frowned. "But the entire command crew has Nova level clearance."

Shepard smiled. "The circuit is for private communications either from the President in my capacity as his personal agent, or the Citadel Council in my capacity as a Spectre. You'd need Tantalus level clearance for those. They should be locked out, but whenever one is active, please make sure we have a clear comm signal and engage whatever you can to prevent someone hacking into the call."

Traynor nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I think we have a cross-current circuit amplifier that we could use to lock in a signal to the main … uh. Sorry. I have a good idea of how to get on that, ma'am. Didn't mean to get technical." She paused, and winced. "Not that I am implying you don't understand the technical – "

Shepard gave her a smile, and placed her hand on Traynor's shoulder."Breathe, Ensign. I get it. I may be cleared on electronics and comms, but you're here because you're better at it than I am. If you say it will be secure, I know it will be."

Traynor smiled back, pleased with the praise. "Yes ma'am."

"Good. If anything critical comes in, I'll be in my stateroom."

She entered the corridor leading to her personal areas. She'd come to view the cramped cabin aboard the Normandy as 'home', but she couldn't suppress a little excitement at the upgrade she'd gotten in taking command of the Kazan. She'd been handed the Normandy, after all … but she had earned her current command.

Deciding Jiong could wait another minute or two, she entered her quarters. As with most SA staterooms, it was a squarish block, a good fifteen feet long and almost as wide. Black steel decking served as the floor, a low half-wall bisecting the room with space to walk past on either side. The low wall was the mounting for a work desk and small shelf, and another status repeater display. Tucked into a corner was a small table with three chairs around it, and Shepard smiled to see venting to remove cigarette smoke had already been installed. A sliding door revealed a small armory space.

She walked in, noting the desk had her journal and her personal padd on it, along with two books she'd picked up on the Citadel regarding weapons development. Three haptic picture frames curved around the far end of the desk – one of her and Von Grath, smoking cigars, feet propped up on a batarian terrorist's chest. One of her and Anderson, the day she was made a Spectre. And one she'd taken of Liara, smiling faintly, when they were at Flux the night before departing for Noveria.

She glanced into her armor cabinet, seeing her suit of Spectre armor, and then glanced over the other half of the quarters. A standard SA bunk was against the wall, which looked like it could fold up to make a couch. The rest of the room was blank and plain – two steel cabinets, a standing wardrobe, and a flat-panel door cracked open to show a shower and toilet combination took up most of the space. Her only alteration was in having a small omnifoundry unit tucked in the near corner along with a rack for weapons.

Her ODIN – still displaying melted spots on the rubberized handle from the last fight on the Citadel – was racked there. So was her heavy sniper, Saren's Sunfire-B pistol, and a pair of customized Revenant LMG. The last thing on the rack was a mocking gift from Von Grath – an omnisword, a rod about nine inches long with an augmented power supply and a short, spade shaped blade that when energized created an 550 TeV omnifield.

She smirked as she read the note he'd tied to the hilt – '_For the next time you are silly enough to bring a gun to a swordfight_' – and then glanced around the room. Her Penal Legion blanket, shipbag and personal effects – mostly a single suitcase with a handful of the civilian clothes she'd gotten on the Citadel, her few pictures, and her ship models – were sitting on the middle of her bed. She grunted and turned to cross the narrow hallway, entering her stateroom.

The stateroom was slightly smaller than her living area, dominated by an armorplast desk much like the one in her office on Arcturus Station. A repeater status panel and several other haptic screens dominated the port side of the room, along with a personal comm station. The right side of the room had a series of haptic images of ships bearing the name Kazan – several old naval ships from the Pre-Alliance era, a MKV Cruiser from the First Contact War, and a heavy cruiser of the old style destroyed in the Battle of Horizon. Below this was a low bookcase and a shelf of haptic storage media, probably systems manuals or something along those lines. The floor was thinly carpeted in plain Alliance blue, and the overhead had the symbol of the SA embossed over the thin steel surface.

The desk had a comfortable mesh chair with a liquid-swivel mount base, and she sat down with a small sigh, before glancing at Jiong who was seated in a smaller but otherwise identical chair in front of her desk. "So. We're about to launch."

Jiong nodded. "As a command officer of flag rank, this will be your first assignment where you actually need a political officer. The Normandy was an impressive ship, but hardly a danger to society as a whole. Officers in command of a heavy cruiser or above, much less an entire battle group, are more concerning to the Systems Alliance, since if you went rogue you could pose a threat to a garden world or embarrass the SA as a whole. As such, while you have command of BG Chiron, it is my duty to ensure you are discharging your orders in a manner consistent with SA mandates, Admiralty directives, and where applicable, Citadel treaties and law."

Shepard rubbed her temples. "I figured that much."

Jiong nodded. "It's also my duty to execute you if you become a danger to the SA. On that, I'm afraid my conditioning is rather inflexible. Since we both know how that would end, especially if Lady Liara was present, I would suggest that if you decide to take some sudden, Shepard-like action such as going rogue or mutiny against the orders of the Admiralty that you kindly do so when I'm off the ship. Of all the possible ways to die, being executed by two beautiful women does not top my bucket list."

Shepard laughed. "Aww, Alfred. You do like me."

Jiong sighed. "You are more tolerable than my last assignment...but not by much." He gestured to the safe on the wall, next to her desk. "The ship cannot engage full drive systems or arm any weapons until the systems are removed from codelock. For a frigate that duty was solely up to the CO and XO – here, the Political Officer and CO are the ones who have access." He triggered his omnitool, and she did the same, and the safe unlocked. Shepard pulled out a single laser keycard and then turned it over, frowning.

"I'm used to just a scanstrip." The card glittered in the light, a series of mirrors inside containing a unique combination of data that allowed access to highly secured systems, rather than a printed barcode like she'd seen on the Normandy.

Jiong sniffed. "Not secure enough. The keycard can be inserted into the panel below the repeater display. The VI should decrypt the code and announce the results – as well as our orders and situation briefing."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Fancy."

She followed his instructions, and the VI chimed politely. "Scanning. Codes recognized. Welcome, Major-Commander Shepard, Commissar-Captain Jiong. Authorization validated. Weapons and drive systems unlocked. Stand by for orders."

The haptic screen on the far wall flickered into life, the VI's voice speaking even as images flashed up. "From Command, Second Fleet, Special Operations, to Battle Group Chiron, Kazan. Orders are as follows: depart 1500 from Arcturus Station, make standard rated speed to relay to Sigurd's Cradle. Shift to secondary relay at maximum rated speed to Skopsis system. Achieve high anchorage at Watson and dock with Scorpion Weapons Station. Onload required systems and medical team at station. Authorization of no more than five hours for loading and embark/disembark cycle."

"Proceed to shakedown evaluation by accessing secondary relay, Lenal system, at varied speeds for shakedown operations. Turian Hierarchy aware of your presence. Conducted level fifteen engineering subsystem and ops system testing, level ten engine systems testing, and level five calibration battery. Test fire each weapons system and record deformation patterns by targeting asteroids. Conclude testing with full level nine life support, sensor, and fighter launch tests. Stand down from shakedown and return to Arcturus at maximum rated speed. Orders end."

Shepard opened her mouth to speak when the VI chimed again.

"Addendum to orders. Classification Tantalus, Level Nine." The VI's voice shifted to that of Elizabeth Windsor-Turham at this point. "Shepard, be advised that the Kazan has already undergone full testing. Deliberate and easy to identify and fix errors in ship's fuel systems were introduced in drydock to justify to crew the need for shakedown. This cruise will allow you to review your crew, but the real purpose is to investigate anomalous sensor readings we have been detecting near the Lenal system. AIS agents have not been able to operate openly in the area, but we have information from outside sources that a possible Cerberus facility was in the region. If found, capture it intact if at all possible. If nothing is found, make best speed back to Arcturus so you can report onwards to Pinnacle Station."

The VI shut off, and Shepard sighed. "Well, at least we know the shakedown will go smoothly."

Jiong frowned. "That is … rather unusual. Something about this doesn't make much sense. They could have just loaded the missiles and torpedoes on a transport and had us load up here, if we didn't really need a shakedown. Sending a high profile ship with a famous CO and untested crew to check out a possible Cerberus base in turian territory is … "

Shepard shrugged. "Fishy?"

Jiong leaned back. "I hardly wish to cast aspersions on the command structure, and suppositious conclusions are not going to help us in the short term." He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. "I suppose we will have to wait and see, as there is little aside from speculation that we can do now. Aside from the orders, I have the PRIDE reports for the crew ready. Summaries for general crew, specifics for the command crew."

Shepard grimaced. PRIDE, or the Political Reliability Index for Direct Evaluation, was the system used to evaluate the dependability of SA officers. A mix of psychological evaluation, paranoid snooping, and sociological examination, it always left a bad taste in Shepard's mouth to do the things, much less review them.

Unfortunately, once the Commissariat had learned about the dangers of indoctrination, it became even more determined that PRIDE checks would be done and done often. Taking command of a ship was one of those hard checkpoints that required them.

She nodded. "Alright, I'm all ears."

Jiong nodded, consulting his padd. "I've reviewed the PRIDE ratings of the incoming crew. The lowest was a 3.1, well above baseline. Most crew members have at least five years of service with no serious infractions. The entire crew is human with the exception of two asari in secondary ops, who both have eleven years of service. They are, I believe, commoners – I have already had their division NCO make them aware of the presence of Lady Liara. I have vetted them carefully to ensure they are not spies from the Asari Republic. Other than that, the crew is well-trained and refreshingly eager."

Shepard nodded, and he continued. "The junior command cadre – the navigator, the assistant engineer, the CIC coordinator, assistant pilots, fighter command officer, and the damage control officer – all have PRIDE ratings of greater than 4.0, which means they should give us no problems. Aside from slight hero-worshiping tendencies in the DCO and a good deal of arrogant pride in the navigator, there are no real issues to address. Given that they will mostly interact with Pressly, I doubt you will need much information on them, but I've forwarded their service records to your system."

He tapped the padd. "Which brings us to the command crew, the most critical component of the ship's company. As a point of order, your own PRIDE rating remains 4.2. You will also be happy to note that, since your Z2 restriction has been removed, Commissariat monitors usually installed to follow you around are no longer present – the only Commissariat staff on board beside me are my four clearly identifiable subordinates – Commissar Susan D'Alte and Lancers Jackson and Grassi."

There was a slightly strained note in his voice as he mentioned the same Susan, but Shepard only nodded. "Well, it's good to know I'm not a danger to the SA. Who's up next?"

He looked up. "For the command crew, I started with Pressly. PRIDE rating of 4.7. The man is stable, competent, mildly ambitious, and strong-willed. He has a personal admiration for you stemming from your actions at Dirth – his family was there – as well as professional appreciation. Positives include a high index against treasonous thought, strong pro-human beliefs, and a refreshing lack of personal dishonesty. Negatives are mostly stressors from his divorce and his dislike of turians, which was not aided by Mr. Vakarian's concealment of Ms. Telanya's reasons for being on the Normandy. Psychologically he's a doer and a systems-builder. He likes making things work. He prides himself on details, on picking up pieces people miss and dependability. He has a mild sense of xenophobia but it does not appear to extend to Lady Liara or Ms. Zorah."

She nodded. "I've noticed that. The attention to detail, that is. And Liara says he's … kind."

Jiong nodded and rubbed his chin. "All in all, I'd say there are no worries for your XO. I'm afraid the same isn't true for the rest of your staff, ma'am."

Shepard frowned. "Explain."

Jiong sighed. "With the exception of Pressly, who I just covered and is well within parameters, and the Comms Ensign Traynor, who is somewhat boring and fairly well balanced, each of the command staff have at least one strike against them. While none of them fall below the 2.0 threshold that requires Commissariat monitoring and denial of promotion, none of them are at the expected 3.8 to 4.0 mark we would normally see in command crew. That may bring additional scrutiny onto them and you if there are difficulties in our missions."

Shepard sighed. "Alright. Who's first?"

Jiong tapped his padd."We'll start with Joker. His PRIDE rating was never that high to begin with, currently 2.8. Mr. Moreau isn't here because he has pride in the Systems Alliance, or because he loves humanity, or even because he is ambitious. He is here because he is rather childishly defying both his parents and everyone who expected him to be nothing more than an invalid."

He sighed. "He is immensely talented, very intelligent and surprisingly good at interpreting body language and motivation. He is also very homesick, a borderline depressive-manic personality with a lot of resentment and anger issues. His attachment to Ms. Zorah is definitely not mentally healthy, as their relationship is less based on how they are alike and more on their mutual resentments of authority figures, personal conditions, and a feeling of powerlessness."

Shepard exhaled. "I know Joker's a bit abrasive and he has a chip on his shoulder -"

Jiong shook his head. "Ma'am, I'm not saying this to be a hard-ass or a martinet. If the boy was merely acting out, I would care less. He is unstable. If he's put in a situation where he feels his flying ability wasn't good enough to prevent a disaster, he will come apart at the seams, because that is the only thing in his entire life he can take pride in, the only thing that makes him feel like he's worth anything. If he's force to choose between his relationship with Ms. Zorah and the Systems Alliance, there is every chance he will choose her. The ignorance of previous commands in alienating the boy is partially addressed by the way he looks up to you, but even that is, I'm afraid, tinged with jealousy. The worst part of this is on most levels he is not even aware he feels this way."

Shepard swallowed. "I trust Joker. 2.7 is still above the baseline minimum, yes?"

Jiong nodded. "Yes, it is. I am merely giving you a warning. You have already admitted that you don't always understand people. I, on the other hand, have years of training in analyzing people, psychology, and reams of reports. Tapped conversations. Monitored emails. The point of the PRIDE system is to let you know exactly where your people stand … and where they are likely to cause issues."

Shepard sighed. "Liara, Tali, and Joker made it through the shit we spent the last year doing, Jiong. Doesn't that prove they should be trusted? Are you saying I should get rid of Joker because he's still young and pissed off at God for giving him fucked up bones?"

Jiong stood, and began to pace, his graceful features agitated. "I am not saying that, Shepard. I am saying that yes, some of your staff has proven themselves. They've also taken _damage. _I'm not here to tear down Joker. He's a fine pilot, and in his own way he's braver than I could ever hope to be. I'm not casting aspersions on his feelings towards Ms. Zorah. If he can find happiness that way, more power to him and her. But I cannot – my conditioning and training will not allow me – to gloss over the problems that he, and Liara, and Tali, and the rest have. And you cannot afford to ignore them. The strongest blade will break after enough wear and tear."

His eyes narrowed. "You, of all people, with your experience on Torfan, should know the value of actually understanding the deeper motivations and conditions of your team."

She flinched at that, and glared. "That...isn't fair."

Jiong shrugged. "I don't like it anymore than you do. Less, even. How would you feel if you were brainwashed into paranoid suspicions about your friends twenty four hours a day? If you were made incapable of fully trusting anyone, of having to dole out justice without mercy and punishment without mitigation for an entire decade, all the while wishing and hoping something would change and not being able to do anything about it? I judge because I am here to judge, not because I like it."

He gave her a hard , clear look, and she shook her head. "I'm not going to like the rest, am I?"

He exhaled, and sat back down. "No. I know you hate bullshit and fancy talk, but this is important. You have to understand these things. You are a critical person of importance now. You are the one who most deeply understands the threat of the Reapers. You have the credibility to make people listen, the power to get things done. Mr. Cole remarked to me that our struggle isn't over, the President would not expend all these resources on you for the sake of some political infighting. Would he?"

She shook her head. "No. I can't tell you the details, but … no."

Jiong nodded. "Then listen to me when I tell you something that will save their lives. They all have flaws. I am not talking about their combat ability, or ability to perform their jobs. Lady Liara is far more intelligent than I. Tali'Zorah's hasty examination on engineering concepts showed she was the match of any veteran engineer in the Fleet. Mr. Dallas, for all his quirks, is one of the better hackers and logistics officers I've seen. Mr. Colms is a literal genius with a higher IQ than 99% of the human population. Mr. Cole tore through OCS as if it was boot camp."

His fingers tapped at his padd hard enough to deform the screen. "Their problems are in their histories and personalities, their drives and needs. Those are what you have to understand. If it comes down to it, can I trust Joker to do what's best? No, I can't, because he and I don't see eye to eye on what is important. For me, it is the SA's security – for him it's his friends. Pressly, if he had to, would sacrifice his friends for the SA. You, if you absolutely had to, would sacrifice almost anything to stop a threat to the galaxy."

Jiong looked up. "But some of them will not, and the time for you to know where they stand is not when the chips are down, but now, where you can plan ahead."

She sighed. "Fine. Continue."

Jiong nodded, then grimaced. He spoke of Tyrone Cole's suppressed anger and uncertainty of direction, and warned that the man had already begun to develop a martyr complex He also pointed out that Cole was, according to his records, almost as reckless as his father in combat. While his PRIDE rating was a solid 3.0, Jiong felt Cole needed either a grounding in actual leadership or someone to shake the ghost of his father out of his head.

He spoke of Dallas's lassitude and lack of drive, his womanizing, dishonesty and likelihood to evade danger. He spoke of the man's ability to multitask and see patterns and loopholes, but suggested the man's removal from the _Solguard _made him doubt his own worth and give up on any ambitions he once had. His low 2.3 PRIDE rating reflected his lack of true belief in the SA and his semi-legal actions in the past.

He touched on the near mania and manipulative tendencies of Jerred Colms, his childhood trauma and his fixation on weapons. In Jiong's opinion, the man was dangerous. He was far too intellectual and analytical to get a good read on, and Jiong had given the man a provisional 2.5 PRIDE rating, simply because anyone that arrogant and convinced of their own innate superiority had not a single self-sacrificial impulse, even if for the greater good of the SA.

He spoke of Tali's isolated loneliness, talked about her nervous and touchy pride, which he suspected was the manifestation of an inferiority complex, and finished by going over her confusion regarding Joker. He feared she saw him in an idolized light, as someone to remove her from her own issues. Her attraction, he felt, held less sense of a sexual interest and more like some kind of romantic, deranged Pilgrimage gift to justify her own lack of self-worth. He hesitated to give her a low PRIDE score since just being non-human dinged it, but he couldn't justify rating her higher than 2.2, which meant she would come under Commissariat review if there was even a single discipline problem.

Shepard listened, holding her temples and occasionally interjecting her thoughts. Halfway through the process, the ship jolted heavily, before she felt the subtle kick of the mass generators creating artificial gravity. Pressly called out for the crew to secure for transit on the 1MC, giving her a moment to collect her thoughts as Jiong fell silent.

That Cole was troubled didn't surprise her. Given Greg Cole's behavior as nearly the perfect NCO, she could only imagine what the man, however good he was as a master chief, had inflicted on his son. Tyrone was going to try and prove himself, if not to her then to the ghost of his dead father, and she knew better than anyone that you couldn't impress the dead. Maybe Vega could talk to him, or the surprisingly philosophical Montoya.

Colms interest in weapons was a bit interesting, but everything else about the man made her dislike him. She didn't know what to make of his decision to react to the trauma in his life by planning to be the next Jason Hadne-Kadar, but that didn't' really matter. As long as he did his job she could care less, although if he tried to manipulate her he was in for the most painful surprise of his life. She worked on weapons to get her mind off the demons in her past, and she made them to protect, not merely to destroy. Colms may have had the same intent, but listening to Jiong describe the man's icy fixation only made her skin crawl.

Dallas's laziness just made her sigh. The man's cavalier attitude towards women pissed her off, but not as much as her attitude towards the women going along with it. The fact that he was capable of pulling together hard-to-get equipment out of the SA supply system – or from beyond it – didn't give him a free pass to goof off. Given that she was going to be using the man's skills to ensure she had privacy with Liara, she wasn't going to crack down on Dallas' womanizing, but that was all the slack she was willing to give. She was going to watch him like a hawk, and if he endangered her crew with his bullshit, he was going through a bulkhead face first.

And if he was fool enough to make a pass at her, she was going to beat him until he looked like a hanar.

Jiong's breakdown of Tali evoked mixed feelings. Shepard had dragged the girl into this whole mess to begin with – first by bringing her along with her recordings, then taking her on the Normandy, then making her part of her strike team, and finally convincing her to join the SA and her crew. It was all well and good for Jiong to complain she didn't have the SA's interests first, no shit. She couldn't really worry too much about that. But the idea that Tali was lonely and clinging to Jeff and doubting herself made her upset and angry at herself. And she knew that it wasn't Tali's fault this had all happened, but hers.

She closed her eyes, remembering the angry words of Tali's father when he'd been told of Tali joining the SA. "I cannot force my daughter to take a different path, Shepard. But if she dies under your command, I will kill you, I swear on the homeworld itself, no matter what the cost."

She'd been amused at the threat at the time, thinking it a father's love. Now she wondered if maybe she would have been better off letting Tali go back to the fleet. The girl was suffering and putting up quite the act to not show it. Tali had wanted to talk, about Jeff – when that happened, Shepard would see how accurate Jiong's analysis was.

When he got to Liara, Shepard grit her teeth. "Jiong , I'm pretty sure I know Liara better than you do. I don't give a goddamned shit what your fucking PRIDE ratings say, she isn't going to double cross me."

Jiong sighed. "Shepard, I'm sure you know what is in her thoughts more fully. I'm certain you know her history and life better than anyone. And I agree, actually – her loyalty to you is absolute. But that is only one perspective of her task aboard the Kazan. It isn't an outside analysis of her weaknesses or liabilities. And if you are seriously telling me you can be dispassionate and professional where she is concerned I will eat my hat. I wouldn't be in your shoes. I'd relieve myself of command."

Shepard frowned. "Then why did you go along with my idea? The marrying thing. Letting her join the crew. Fraternization is forbidden for just that reason. Actually, why the fuck haven't you put up more of a fight about her being asari? About what I'm doing?"

Jiong rolled his eyes. "Because she is the core of why you have changed yourself as a person. Our observers reported that much. You aren't the kind of person who will endanger others to protect Liara. You will only fight harder if she is in danger. I truly pity anyone foolish enough to harm her, as I've heard stories about what occurred on Edolus. And you need her, Shepard. I'm not blind. I am a firm believer in rules and regulations, but the Fifth Consideration of the Commissariat Code says very clearly to remember that humans make rules, rules don't make humans. There are things I am willing to overlook when they are .. necessary."

He paused. "I will admit there are elements of the Commissariat who looked very dimly on your liaison with her. And there will be elements of the SA command and the public that, once you get married, will complain loudly and cause trouble. My fellow Commissar, Susan, agreed with me that pressing the issue with you was the single fastest way to weaken your already damaged faith in the SA, Shepard. It doesn't matter if I think it's appropriate." He glanced away, frowning.

Shepard watched him curiously as his jaw clenched. "Alfred, just say ...whatever it is."

He exhaled. "Please understand. I wasn't lying when I said I wanted to ride your coat-tails to glory. And I wasn't lying when I said you could do a great deal of good for the SA. But I will admit the main reason I suspect the SA and the Commissariat has not stopped your liaison with Lady Liara is that it makes you extremely vulnerable. A violent BDSM-submissive relationship and dangerously deep bond with an asari barely more than a teenager who is the daughter of a galactic criminal? She's your weakness, Shepard, and all anyone has to do to wreck you is kill her. Whoever did so wouldn't survive your retribution, but after that you would … broken."

Jiong's eyes closed. "As to Lady Liara herself, she has, like many asari citizens, transferred her loyalties from the Asari Republic – which given their acts were already weak – to the Systems Alliance. In a strict sense of her political reliability I would say she's a solid 3.5. However, this is only the case as long as _you_ are also loyal to the SA. She will perform well at being a good soldier or being a good science officer only because she sees it at required to make sure you are doing well. If she has your faith and support, she will be unbreakable. She would rather die than betray you."

Shepard winced but nodded. "And?"

Jiong sighed. "Psychologically, she's a mess. She is _very _young for an asari, barely the equivalent of a twenty year old, and bonding at that age makes mental stability much harder to maintain. Given the shocks to her mind over the past year, the fact that she is fragile should not surprise you. The most obvious problem is that her attachment to you is all that is giving her any stability in her life. You lead a very dangerous lifestyle, and if you die she is not going to survive, Shepard. That makes her a liability."

Shepard snarled. "She's stronger than you think, Jiong. She's had enough people try to tear her down without you joining them."

The man folded his arms, even his glacial patience at last snapping. "Christ! Do you think I am insulting her? I am saying she is _hurt_! She had to watch her own mother try to kill her. She had to bury her and then find out she was still alive and responsible for the deaths of millions of innocents! She had her entire people turn their back on her and send her off to die. She had to fight her mother again, this time watching her father nearly bleed to death in front of her and her lover get the shit beaten out of her. And then she had to kill her to save you."

Jiong narrowed his eyes. "If that wasn't enough she had to watch Benezia get up and then come to herself again, and know at the last her mother was herself again before being forced to watch her immolate herself in the most painful way an asari can die. She has a lot of pain, and the only thing she has keeping her sane – or more to the point, from just giving in to despair and misery – is you. Don't tell me that's healthy, or the proper mindset for any officer."

Shepard glared at him, her voice a whisper. "I already know that. I feel it all the time. I try to be there to help her with it, but what the fuck do I do? I can barely figure out how to get past my own shit!" She slammed her fist on the surface of the desk, before covering her eyes with her other hand.

Jiong's features softened, and he grimaced in self-loathing for a long second before he forced himself to continue. "If I was more of a man and less of a puppet, I would have had the guts to stop this when it was just a night of release. But you are bonded, and interfering with that would … make you unfit for duty or command. My conditioning won't let me destroy an asset of the SA like that."

He exhaled, glancing down at his hands. "I told you when we first met that I don't expect you to trust me, but I do need you to listen to me and take my advice in consideration when it comes to keeping you out of trouble. I didn't … don't … wish to alienate you. But I would rather you hate me and know the truth about what you face than like me and fall victim to consequences you haven't considered."

Shepard exhaled as well, clenching her fists. "So what am I supposed to do?"

Jiong folded his hands together. "I have given some thought to that. I would like Commissar D'Alte to work with Lady Liara in discussing her issues. Like me, she is trained heavily in psychology, and her xenospeciality is asari. She needs to take a good look at herself, and her own place in events. She is not simply an archeologist following in your wake any longer, and the situation you are in flies against regulations and hundreds of years of tradition in avoiding fraternization. Susan … will be able to give her guidance she needs." He paused. "You can trust her. I give you my word on that. She will not hurt Liara."

He exhaled. "I would also suggest you work with me to discuss your own issues. Your political officer is the only person you can be sure is not out to screw you over, and you have very few people you can confide in. Anderson has never been in this situation, nor has Von Grath, and neither of them are here."

He glanced at his padd. "Second, I would recommend you take into account the vulnerabilities and weakness we have discussed. Mr. Colms should be kept busy and made to understand that his grandiose ideas are secondary to his job as Weapons Officer. Mr. Dallas should be firmly put in his place and encouraged to find whatever spine and drive he has again. Mr. Cole should be trained and pushed to excel with the understanding that if he dies he will hurt his unit. Ms. Zorah and Mr. Moreau need to have a mutual discussion with you about if she really wants to be here or is forcing herself to be here."

Shepard nodded. "You forgot one person."

Jiong arched his eyebrow. "Who?"

She pointed her finger at him. "You."

For several seconds he was quiet, before taking off his hat. "Touche."

He glanced down, before slowly unwinding the sash around his waist and laying it on the table. "What I say is as … a man, or as much of a man remains within this flesh, Shepard. It is something that is private, and I would ask you not repeat it, excepting the fact that you can not hide such from Lady Liara."

He looked up. For a moment the iron hardness of his face was gone, leaving him just a handsome, intelligent man, sadness and frustration on his features. "No Commissar is truly loyal to the SA. We are taken as children, orphans from broken homes or victims of child abuse. In my case, my father beat my mother to death and sodomized myself and my younger brother, while my elder brother sold him out to the bounty services for cash, leaving us adrift. The SA took us in, and I haven't seen my younger sibling since."

He glanced away. "We are conditioned with drugs, with brainwashing, with surgery, with cyberware. You cannot have loyalty to something you are forced into obeying. A part of me that I try not to think about hates the SA. Hates humanity for needing something like Commissars in the first place. I hate criminality because it keeps me trapped in this half-life."

He looked back at her. "Commissars are absolutely reliable because we can't betray. We can't give anything less than one hundred percent. All of my previous assignments have been in situations where I was expected to support a senior officer. Know them. Plan with them. Become their friend. Meet their wives, smile at their children. Laugh with them." He looked away again. "And kill them if they betrayed their oaths. Do you know what it's like to smash in the skull of a man you called your friend and not be able to stop?"

Shepard closed her eyes. "Sadly, Alfred, yes, I do."

He only nodded. "Ah, Torfan. Then maybe you can understand my .. frustration. There are Commissars who desperately wish the situation was different. Who wish there was more focus on making people understand and less on punishment. But at the same time parts of my mind force me to see the criminal as worthless, fit only for execution or hard labor. How do I know which opinions are mine and which are merely that of the Commissariat?"

Shepard opened her eyes and looked at him. "You're not making me like my government any more with this conversation, you know."

Jiong shrugged. "You wanted to know my own assessment? I'm trapped, Shepard, in a job I have loathed for some time, in a mind that does not completely answer to my will. How would you deal with life if you were in love with someone, and you couldn't even say that to them or they to you because of blocks in your behavior? If you had to work with this person for years, wishing things were different? Commissars are not allowed romantic liaisons with other Commissars. That rule is absolute."

He looked at her, his face tense with emotion. "How would you feel if you had to watch Liara seduce another man for the sake of duty, when you could never kiss her? How would you feel to have to execute misguided men, women, and children, because your mind was not your own? I pitied Lady Benezia when she came free of her indoctrination for those few moments before the end. I know _exactly _what it feels like."

"Loyalty is a concept that is won by admiration, by sacrifice, by mutual understanding. _Every _Commissar has a 1.0 PRIDE rating, because we are not given the choice to serve."

He exhaled, leaning back. "And there it is, my assessment. I am a slave to the wishes of the SA. I am unable to change that right now. I would like to believe that I am, if not a friend, at least making the effort to try to be one. You accepted me and my assistance when almost everyone in your life you trusted had betrayed you at one time or another. The only way I can honor that trust in me is in letting you know that if the time comes when I must turn against you, I will not be able to stop myself, but I don't want to."

Shepard nodded slowly, and he continued. "I would like nothing more than to encourage you and Liara. I think you are good for each other. It makes me happy to see you laughing and being able to look forward to life rather than chasing death. But I am forced to tell you the truth, even if that makes you hate me for my words."

Shepard met his gaze and sighed. "I don't hate you. I didn't know you guys were that … locked down, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The SA has given me a lot of disappointment in the past few months, and … I'd lost track of some of that with all of .. this." She waved a hand at the room.

Jiong nodded. "Which was no doubt at least partially intentional. I do not speak of my own situation to incite pity, nor can I honestly say that you should hate the SA for what they have done to me. If they had not taken action, I would have died on the streets or ended up a child slave. If there is a liability in my service aside from my conditioning it is that I measure and distrust all around me. I can't even have a relationship with a woman unless it's a mission, and that is only lies."

He smiled, and retied the sash around his waist. "If I have loyalty, it is to and will be only to you. When I am advanced in rank high enough to have my conditioning removed and be free, it will be due to you dragging me along in your own career. It is not mere ambition that drives me. It is hope of a better day, Shepard." He finished the knot, and looked up. "We are all bound by our past and our burdens. But I have to believe there will be a day when what I have sacrificed pays off."

She nodded. "What will you do when that day comes?"

Jiong got a distant look in his eye. "I will be able to say what I have felt since I was a very young man. If I have nothing else, to be able to say the words to her once before I die is all I ask."

She nodded slowly. "... for what it's worth, I'm sorry you have to … live through that. Like that." She sighed. "And I guess I should cut you some slack. The only way you have to get out of that mess is to have me become important enough that they promote you, yet you have to tell me crap about Tali and Liara you know will piss me off. Hard situation."

Jiong shrugged. "I trust your ability to face hard truths, Shepard. You have done so your entire life."

She snorted. "No, I haven't. Liara had a conversation with my old squad-mate, Jason Dunn...she shared with me in our bond. He said I had all the closure there was to have but I kept clinging to my past and pain because I was scared of failing and fucking things up worse, so I pushed everyone away. That's not facing truth, it's hiding from it." She set her jaw. "But I can't afford to push people away now, whether I understand it or not."

She glanced at the padd, at the coldly worded descriptions of her crew. "I'll … talk with each of them. Let them know … where I stand on some things. I won't ignore this."

Jiong nodded. "That is all I can ask." He glanced at the status repeater on her wall. "It looks as if we're about fifteen minutes out from the relay. I should give you some time to prepare for the jump." He stood, placing his cap back on his head, and turned to leave.

He paused at the door. "Shepard."

She exhaled and looked up. "Yes?"

His face shifted, and then he firmed his jaw. "If there is one piece of advice I can give you, it is this. You say you can't help Lady Liara, that you are unable to help yourself. Yet you have helped her. You have helped many. If there is one thing in your profile that continues to limit your performance, is it your misunderstanding of pain."

She shook her head. "I would think I understand pain better than most. It lets you know you aren't dead."

Jiong's voice was soft, and held more emotion in it than she could ever remember. "Pain, Shepard, is anything you wish you could change, but can't. For a long time that was your whole life, I suppose. But you are no longer a troubled criminal, flung from battle to battle. There are others who depend on you. Others that require your leadership, your strength, and, yes, in Lady Liara's case, your ability to rebuild yourself and love, as trite as that may sound."

He met her gaze directly. "If you refuse to let go of the things that haunt you, you will be in danger of failing them all. Major-Commander Sara Shepard, Baroness and Spectre, is not the same person as Sara Shepard, sex-slave , criminal and Penal Legion soldier. That woman is dead. You are alive."

He exited the stateroom, leaving her lost in thought for long minutes. She stared at her hands, letting the words pour through her mind.

_Poor Jiong. There's a guy even more fucked up than I am. _

She couldn't even imagine a life like his, forced to uphold that which he might not even believe in. A part of her wished he'd never told her.

And yet, he didn't let that hold him or stop him. He had a goal and he was working towards it, regardless of the pain, and the suffering, and his own ugly past that sounded damn near as bad as hers.

_Pain is anything you wish you could change but can't._

She let that thought roll around in her head a bit, and considered his words, rising from the chair and walking back across the corridor to enter her quarters. The pictures flickered up on her desk as she came in.

Voices from her past drifted across her memory.

Von Grath, bloodied after Horizon, grinning wryly and sitting in the wreckage of his command cruiser. _Shepard, eh? Well, don't just stand there, girl, help me up. Shattered leg and all that, I can't be seen laying about. I say, if you can take out a Glorious batarian in a fist fight, you are definitely wasted in the ranks. I'll have to steal you from Rachel. _

Anderson, his bulk blocking the overhead lights, visiting her in the hospital after Torfan. _No, Sara. I don't give a damn what the brass says, or your teammates, or anyone else. This is not your fault. This is on the Systems Alliance. It's on General Tyrson, and the Fleet Master just shot him. The only thing you failed at is being a machine instead of a human being. And that isn't a failure. It's just life. _

Rachel Florez, blood spattered and calm, standing over the corpses of her parents. _There is no such thing as 'moving on', Shepard. These people weren't parents, they were shit. Parents don't sell their children. Parents don't ignore them. You can't hang on to something you never had, so stop fucking trying. You're mine now. Not theirs. Never theirs._

Helen Chakwas, her eyes intense, in the medical bay of the Normandy. _A monster would not put themselves in harms way, again and again, every time they had to sacrifice soldiers, as if hoping to die alongside the men and women you had to let die to get the job done. I'm not as hard as you. I don't think I could do what you did. That doesn't mean it makes you evil._

She walked across the room and sat down on the narrow bed, picking up the soft folds of her Penal Legion blanket. Feeling the rough battered wool that had seen so many bunks, lockers and battlefields.

Greg Cole, his face framed in smoke, bandaged and battered from Eden Prime. _I just decided to stop holding myself in the past over bullshit I couldn't change. Got married. Had two good boys. Decided the only thing I could do to get past it all was to leave something behind I could feel clean about. _

Liara, naked and beautiful, bruised and bleeding, eyes lined with hope and tears. _I am your strength, and you are mine. I am your light when yours goes dark, and you are my bravery when my courage fails. I am yours, if you will have me. _

Her hands tightened around the blanket.

Liara, sitting at the piano in Anderson's apartment, elegant fingers drifting along the keys. _I learned there that sometimes what we hold most valuable to us is not what others expect of us, or even what we think we want. It is those things that cry out to our souls when we are still and quiet. A reminder that we are but sparks from the fire, flickering for a few moments of brightness before the dark. That we cannot hold onto everything we cherish unless we take time to actually cherish it._

Anderson holding her as she cried onto his chest. _I don't want to hear you ever wondering what will happen when you mess up, or what will happen when shit goes bad. I want to hear you tell me what you're going to do when you triumph. I want to see you live, child. I want to see you burn away all the chains people have thrown on you and see that smirk again, see that fire in your eyes._

She sat there, and then firmed her jaw.

"Hey you." She smiled almost affectionately at the blanket. "Been here since the start, I guess. Every fight. Every base." She rubbed the blood stain in one corner, the one staining the Alliance 'A'.

"For a long time I saw you as a reminder of how far I'd come. But I guess you're more of a reminder of how far I could fall. Of what happens if I fuck up again, or I'm not good enough."

She looked up, seeing the picture of Liara, and smiled. "I have to move beyond that now. Not for me. For … the people who need me."

She brought the rough cloth to her lips and kissed it, before standing. "VI. Suppress fire alarms, commander's cabin, my authorization."

She walked over to the omnifactory unit, opening the top with a button press, and kicked off the power cycle that would usually heat omnigel to cook it into shape. The circular opening at the top flared white hot, a puff of warm air shifting strands her hair from her face. It was fitting that a furnace of creation should destroy the last link she had to her ugly, blood-drenched past.

An image of the Penal Legion barracks, flaking white paint and the smell of blood and sweat. _You are all dead. From this day until you eat a bullet, you live only by the grace of the Systems Alliance._

"Not any more." She let the blanket fall, watching as the dry wool ignited almost instantly, burning with a bright, fierce light that cast flickering shadows behind her. With a flick of her wrist she tossed the rest of it in, staring as the flames ate it away completely, the last corner to go that bloodstained, frayed 'A'.

There wasn't much smoke, and she walked over to the corner of her room and turned on the venting to dissipate it, pulling out a cigarette as she did so. Lighting it calmly, she sat down on one of the chairs, staring at the deck.

Jiong's last words echoed in her head. _That woman is dead. You are alive._


	4. Chapter 4 : Arc II: Pinnacle of Success

**A/N**: _More than once during OSABC, people PM'd or questioned how many times Shepard danced back and forth between opening up to Liara and getting over her own problems. Fear of opening up to someone, of saying confusing and deeply held emotions, is not something cavalierly overcome by those whose whole lives have been patchworks of misery and suffering. Tali and Joker's little relationship isn't something that can move forward under it's own power. Shepard is merely helping out._

_Commissar Susan is another facet of the Commissariat. There are those like Colonel Dravus, cold and true fanatics, people who never had any faith in humanity save in it's incompetence, greed, and hate. Men like Dravus don't care about costs, and see only the biggest picture. If heads get broken, well, that's the price of progress.. There are those like Jiong – troubled, miserable, and tired, but determined to do their best to make the acts the Commissariat commits happen for a reason. If heads get broken, it's regrettable, but that is the nature of life._

_Susan is a third view. Yes, it's a hard view, but sometimes you can't give into misery, or lose sight of the fact that fell acts are required in a fell universe. Susan has no guilt and keeps her hope not out of blind faith or stoic endurance, but simple belief in tomorrow. At the same time, she's less willing to seal off her emotions and care, unless and until a person turns into a target._

* * *

**THE SECOND ARC : THE PINNACLE OF SUCCESS**

"_If I had a credit for every time the personnel briefing on who I was assigned to work with was accurate… I might have one credit."_

– _Saren Arterius , 'Dying for the Cause'_

* * *

O-ATTWN-O

The trip to Watson was fairly short, lasting roughly a day. Shepard had spent the tattered remains of her night alone in her cabin, thinking very hard about how she could solve the problems Jiong had thrown on the table. Her team on the Normandy had issues she'd never addressed, and she had to wonder how much more effective they might have been if she'd picked up on them. But rather than waste time reviewing the past, she focused on the here and now. If President Windsor was right, she couldn't' afford weaknesses in her team.

And even if he wasn't, Liara deserved a better wife than some bitter old soldier never brave enough to turn her back on yesterday. With that thought she'd drifted off to sleep in her cabin. Liara wouldn't show up tonight, for fear of kicking off rumors, and Shepard found her sleep restless and cold.

She'd awoken in a somewhat foul mood, but a shower and a fresh uniform had at least settled her nerves enough to focus. She had three things she wanted to knock out – talk with the Supply Officer about her cabin and soundproofing it, talk to Tali and Joker about the mess they were in, and sit down with Cole, Vega, and the NCO's and review her marines. By the time that was all done, they should be at Watson.

Shepard spent most of her time in the morning touring the ship while organizing her thoughts. She made a show of learning the spaces of the Kazan and seeing the people under her command, although really she was looking for her Supply Officer to check on the status of her 'special order'.

Rather than have the VI hunt the man down, she decided to wander, seeing what she could see. Keep the crew on their feet. Sitting in the CIC watching stars drift by was boring, and Liara had vanished into the science labs hours ago. She could feel a bubbly sense of enjoyment from her bondmate, and decided if Liara was having fun, it was best to let her be.

Watching her nerd out with other nerds would just be too boring to deal with.

The mess decks were spacious, enough to seat a third of the crew at any time, with haptic displays for entertainment or ship status flashes lining the low ceiling. The tables were the same low-slung plastic sets on the Normandy, but the chairs were padded instead of bare metal, and the actually addition of a kitchen with three mess cooks meant an end to MRE's, dried rations, and the dreaded C-rats.

The lead cook, an amiable, grizzled black sergeant by the name of John Carter, quizzed her briefly on her food preferences while she ate a quick breakfast, and reassured her that the coffee was not crap. "That slick-ass supply officer got us three pallets of Vegan Golden Brown, and a couple of cans of actual Columbian from Earth. We still got the navy ration in the storage bays if we run out, though. Wouldn't stand to think on what we'd do with no coffee, ma'am."

She'd laughed and after finishing her meal, tried the coffee. It, as promised, was very good, and she took a cup with her as she continued on. The living areas were split between rows of hibernation coffins for the most junior rates, and small six man bunk-rooms for junior NCO's and senior techs. As usual, the rooms were split between sexes. Everything was neatly stowed and if she saw a few racy pictures on some of the lockers in the all-male bunk-rooms, she wasn't going to raise a fuss.

When she saw a pinup of what had to be a digitally edited image of herself in a very unlikely posture and a distinct lack of clothing, however, she called over the deck division NCO, a bearded chief named McAllister. "Chief, I am not going to rip someone a new asshole over that picture as long as it is gone and the person who put it up reminded of what isn't acceptable aboard a Systems Alliance ship by the next time I make my rounds."

The chief had face-palmed upon seeing the thing, tearing it off the locker with a flush of embarrassment. "I'm very sorry about this ma'am. Laskins, most probably. I needed a volunteer to clean the hangar bay with a toothbrush and now I have one. Won't happen again, ma'am."

She smiled and nodded. "Good. I don't care the if the boys have their porn, but there's a goddamned line, Chief. That also goes for the two asari we have on board – I do not want to hear any stories of them fucking their way through the crew OR being harassed."

He coughed. "Yes'm. I, uh, I'll have a word with Master Chief Ginsburg about it."

She smiled again. "Good. Quarters look sharp, Chief. Keep up the good work and let the crew know I'm pleased."

The exercise area had a couple of marines doing cardio, along with a disgustingly in shape Emilo Vega pumping iron. She'd waved and kept going, the chances of finding Dallas in the gym was about zero, after all.

She'd finally located him in the Lounge. The ship's lounge had more than a few sailors relaxing after watch in it, who stiffened to attention when she entered. "Knock that shit off. You're relaxing, so relax." She smiled at the grins that broke out, and stepped past to the far end of the lounge, towards where Supply Officer Dallas was leaning back in a chair.

She cleared her throat and he glanced away from a padd in his hand to meet her eyes. "Did you need something, ma'am?"

She nodded. "While we're on the way to Watson, I need to review a few things with you. Your office is on this deck, correct?"

He tucked his padd away and nodded, turning to a rather overdeveloped blond sitting next to him. "Shera, make sure we get those replacements filed in the system before midwatch. I will be in Sups if you need me."

He got to his feet, brushing back his hair and inclined his head. "Please follow me, ma'am."

The walk to his office was short, and the office itself smallish, mostly taken up by a large set of sliding haptic screens on a rack system. He gestured to one of the simple chairs in one corner while seating himself behind his own narrow desk. "Keeping track of the parts and supply chains for a heavy cruiser is something I've never done before, Major. I'm still sort of playing catch up on more than a few aspects."

She waved a hand as she sat. "That's fine. I want to make a few things clear. Jiong has no doubt already spoken to you."

He flinched. "Ah...yes he did, Major. Very clearly."

She leaned forward. "Good. I like clear. I like blunt even better, because I'm not much for fancy language and hidden meanings. You're not a stupid man so I shouldn't have to explain myself more than once. You will provide me the best logistics service you can. You will push yourself to master this system, to ensure my marines are not in danger, and to equip them in a manner from which they don't get shot to fucking pieces because the SA is blowing money on haptic art, fucking bubble fountains, or a goddamned old folks home instead of on the military."

She leaned back."I don't give a shit about what you've gone through, Dallas. I have no time for pity, for myself or anyone else. As long as you give me what I need when I need it, I could care less if the silly tramps in your department suck your dick until it falls off. But the first time you fuck up, or don't meet my requirements, you will be in a world of shit. And if you in any way endanger my ship, my mission, my marines, or God fucking help you, my officers? I will remind you why they call me the Butcher."

She folded her arms. "I trust we are very fucking clear?"

He gave a very shaky exhalation, eyes wide. "Y-yes ma'am. Very very clear."

She smiled brightly. "Good! Now I won't have to figure out how to kill you." She paused. "I wouldn't have to do this kind of thing if you'd get off your ass, Dallas. You've had a free ride for a long time, and I have a low tolerance for people who don't push themselves."

He looked at her a long moment before shrugging. "With all due respect... I'm not you, ma'am. There was a time I pushed myself, ma'am. Didn't get shit for it. It's one thing to tell me 'don't fuck up'. I get that. That's fair enough. But you and I both know my career isn't going anywhere. I want to get through the last three years of my deployment without being shot to shit fighting geth or whatever, and without being blown up, eaten by worms, killed by batarians or worse."

He fiddled with the loose datapad on his desk, not meeting her gaze. "Glory isn't what it's cracked up to be."

She sighed. "Perhaps not, Lieutenant. I think I can say I know that a lot better than you do." She softened her tone. "But I need a lot of support to get things done. There's crap coming ahead that the SA, that the Citadel races, aren't ready for. A big war."

He frowned. "Against the geth?"

She didn't answer that, merely continuing. "Regardless of the enemy, the whole reason I was kicked upstairs so hard is to prepare. That's why you were chosen. There's things the SA won't sign off on that I need to get the job done. If I'd gone up against Saren with stock weapons and armor, he'd have shot us dead in ten seconds flat."

He nodded. "I've done a lot of … um, off the books upgrading of our boys in the field, ma'am. I won't argue with it, but it's not something I can do without cash."

She nodded. "I've already got that handled. When the time comes, you'll get what you need." She frowned. "The main reason I'm here, besides reminding you of your job, is to inquire about the other equipment I need and had Jiong inform you off."

He nodded. "The Commissar did let me know what you requested. It wasn't easy to get, but I did it. I'm guessing you want a private medical suite in your quarters and security against bugs or spy beams?"

She almost said something then stopped. She'd never even considered someone might bug her quarters. That was both something she should have thought of and a good way to not have to explain that she wanted the equipment because her sexual escapades with Liara ended up with a bit too much blood sometimes.

"Let's just say that the crew doesn't need to see me shot to pieces. It's bad for morale, and I got torn up a lot when I fight. I saw the effect it had on the crew of the Normandy to watch me near death. As for bugs, yes. I have a … problem with talking in my sleep, and I am now handling a lot of sensitive information."

Dallas nodded, pulling open his desk. "Kinetic sound barriers are a good idea, but I went ahead and had the dockwrights inject the walls of your cabin and stateroom with sound-suppressive, lead laced foam as well." He pulled something out of the drawer and set it on the desk. "I have five very illegal sound suppressors that also double as wide-band ECM / signals jammers. The only sound egress would be that venting system they put in your quarters,and that vents to the outer hull where no one can hear anyway. Stick them in each corner of the room and one on the ceiling near the center."

He leaned back in the chair as she pocketed them. "The medical systems are easy, just double ordered spares for the medbay. You can install them in a cabinet, or pull out one of the wall segments and stick them in there. They're powered either by fuel cell or a direct wire connection. Someone from engineering could hook them up in an hour or so, they're stashed in the forward supply room with your name on them." He tapped his omni, her own blipping a message about manuals. "Simple to operate. Simple tissue and bone regenerators and a medpatch extruder. Keep it filled with medigel and lay the brace or the mat over the injured area."

She smiled. "Good work. And the bot?"

He exhaled. "A medical bot with VI controls is harder to locate. The only ones available on the open market are usually asari or salarian models, which is going to raise eyebrows even if I'm careful. They are not cheap, and tech-gangs tend to buy them to assist with certain … illegal modifications to slaves."

She folded her arms, eyes hardening. She remembered that all too well. "How cheap is 'not cheap?'

He shrugged. "For basic diagnosis? A good half a million credits. Trauma options cost more, anything specific to humans even more. Most are calibrated for salarians or asari."

She sighed. With Chakwas not available, having anyone else patch her and Liara up would raise far more questions than a medical bot would. Half a million credits would knock out the entire set of back pay she'd gotten from the SA, however. "I need one with human and asari options. I couldn't get a doctor with asari medical experience, and Lieutenant Commander T'Soni has been injured severely in the past, so having that option would be helpful." She paused. "Quarian would help too, for Tali, but that's not much use without a clean room."

Dallas scratched his head. "Ma'am..not to pry or sound paranoid...but it sounds more like you don't trust the doctors that we'll be assigned to take care of you or the, ah, alien crew members you brought with you."

Shepard gave a thin smile. Jiong was right, the man was sharp, just looking the wrong direction.

_Then again, who would expect you of all people to be shopping for medical gear to cover up what you do in the bedroom?_

She coughed. "I don't know you well enough to go into all the reasons...but you are very close to correct, Lieutenant. Let's just say I have enemies and I'd rather not let them take me or my friends out. There's a lot of people who are still bigots..."

He rolled his eyes and muttered. "Clearly they haven't hooked up with asari girls yet."

She managed to suppress a grin at that, but he was still lost in thought. After a moment he brought up a haptic screen from his desk and began tapping at it. "I might not be able to do this clean, but there's every possibility I could snap up some Sirta equipment that's fallen through the cracks. Noveria's a fire sale even now. I could probably even have it .. "

He broke off to tap at his screen again, frowning. "There's a shipment of Alliance wreckage – busted tanks and some armor units – being shipped to Arcturus for refit/scrap estimates. I think I can finagle a bot like the one you need onto the manifest and then use this nifty code Jiong gave me to lock it in cargo transit once it arrives, but you'll need to send someone to the warehouse to pick it up."

She gave him a smile. "You are good at this, aren't you? I don't even want to _know_ why you'd know about a shipment incoming from Noveria. Just do it. How much?"

He leaned back and grinned rakishly. "That's the wonderful part, Major, about being good at this. Since Sirta got it's face kicked in by the investigation of their connection to Cerberus by the NDC, they're not exactly up on database security any longer. Give me a day or two and I'm certain I can transfer a medbot into the holding facility with the scrap for a nominal payment to a local. Probably a few thousand creds, let's call it ten thousand."

She tapped her omnitool and forwarded that much to the ship's account, earmarking it "Training Supplies" before nodding. "I've moved that much to the ship's fund. Training supplies. What about the weapons and armor I mentioned? I'm not ready to give you the cash for them, but what kind of options are we looking at, and how feasible is it?"

He grunted. "I'm still working on that. Slipping over ninety suits of armor and an armory full of guns isn't as simple as playing with manifests. I have to run this past … well, people that don't like lots of attention and prefer payment in cash. The small arms will be the easiest. Lance cannons and anything on the Level III restricted weapons list will be the hardest."

She nodded. "You have about a month, Lieutenant. Maybe a bit more, depending on how long I'm stuck on Pinnacle Station. I am afraid that after we ship from there things are likely to get very lively."

He sighed. "Yes, ma'am. I'll get on it."

O-ATTWN-O

While Shepard was conversing with Dallas, Liara was sitting in the ship's science and signals lab, smiling gently as she reviewed test data from the sensor suite of the Kazan, listening to one of her techs finish a story about his first trip to an extrasolar stellar body.

Her team was composed of three enlisted men – all rather young human males – and two more senior techs, both female humans. They all had a differing scientific specialty, each one working with the others to cover all of the Kazan's various science requirements and sensor needs.

Jason Morris was into astrophysics, and responsible for probes and systems scanning. Chris Johnson was focused on particle analysis, and along with Deidre Scott spent most of his time on sensor interpretation in the local area. Vincent Maedel was FTL emissions, and paired with Lisa Graham on long-range sensors and blueshift tracing.

That left Liara to pick up the areas they didn't have personnel for, mostly ground topography, geological analysis and meteorology, for those times where troops would need to land on a planet. She'd spent much the morning going over the sensor suites and displays on the bridge.

It was a large amount of information to process at once, but Liara found herself upbeat. She was once again focusing on science and deduction, analysis and hard fact. Not scrambling about in battle, dealing with family politics, or facing emotional trauma. It was cathartic and relaxing, even with the challenge of so much new data to take in. And her team was easy to adjust to. Like her, they were scientists. The young men were a touch shy and the older females were almost motherly.

She relaxed, smiling as one sensor test finished flawlessly, and kicked off another, this one a sweep for particle traces.

The lab was not a large room – easily three times that of the Normandy's cramped space, but hardly expansive. As with most spaces on the ship, it was expressed in black floors, pale white walls, and overheads covered in pipes and wiring. Half the room was taken up by wall-height haptic displays that could be broken down by touch into zoom windows, extranet searches, or probe relay telemetry. Down the port and starboard walls of the lab were various workstations, each one slaved to sensors, analysis, or research. Racks of handheld scanners, portable lab equipment, and cabinets of chemicals finished out the contents of the room.

She'd never lead a team in the field before, and she'd been wracked with nervousness about being placed in charge of strange humans, but the men and women who answered to her were anything but difficult to work with. Her past science and archeological experience was, in their eyes, far more 'real' science than endlessly monitoring scanners, and she found herself smiling as they discussed their jobs and interests. Hearing them describe why they loved science and exploration made her remember her own love of research, of the thrill of finding a new Prothean ruin, of the wonder of learning from the relics of the past.

For the past hour she'd been engaged in a rambling, disorganized discussion with her science team about past explorations, while paying halfway attention to the boring sensor tests being automatically handled by the VI. Liara had just begun to describe her work on the first major dig site she'd been brought in on when the door chimed politely.

She glanced up as the slender, black-coated form of a Commissar filled the doorway. Liara took a long moment to recognize the woman as Susan, the Commissar who'd interrogated her in her hospital room on Noveria.

As then, the Commissar's bright , bubbly voice and shining main of ash-blond hair set off the grim lines of her greatcoat and the scarlet sash around her narrow waist."Good morning, sciencey types."

The pinched features of Vincent Madel loosened. "..sciency types? You can't really be a Commissar." He hissed as his teammate jabbed him with an elbow, a look of consternation on his face.

Susan laughed and flipped her hair out of the way. "We're not all gloom and doom, Mr. Madel. Unless we don't get our morning donuts or someone does something stupid like falsify test results to get a grant from the NARSC."

The young man paled, swallowing, and Susan smiled wider. "No worries. I am actually here to speak to Lady Liara."

Liara managed to keep her expression neutral. "A continuation of our discussion on Noveria, I presume?"

Susan made a shushing motion with her hands. "Oh no no no. I mean, you were... well. The thing with the biotics was _really_ scary. I'd rather not do that again. No, we – well, I – just need to talk about some protocol related stuff. Nothing big. You'll be back in here with the boffins in no time." She made a show of looking around, bright eyes taking in the equipment and arcane displays.

Liara sighed. She spoken briefly to Shepard about her meeting with Jiong, and had felt the wild swing of emotions Shepard had undergone during and after the meeting. It seemed it was her turn, now. Turning to her team, she put on a calm expression. "It appears our reminiscence period is over. I will return when I am able, please continue to run the sensor tests. It would help immensely if you could also make sure whatever documentation I need to review to stand watch is available."

Chief Diedre Scott nodded, her graying hair bobbing as she did so. "Yes, ma'am. We'll have it ready."

Liara stood, carefully laying down her datapad. "I am afraid the science officer of this ship does not have their own office...where should we have this conversation?"

Susan bowed, that perfect asari-form bow she'd used on Noveria. "Please follow me, Lady Liara."

The asari did so, letting herself be lead down the corridor to the elevator, and down to the deserted half-deck of level six. The rows of plants and trays of algae from hydroponics dripped as they stepped out, Susan leading her towards the far bulkhead. Racks of supplies cast long shadows in the dim light, the silence of the deck barely broken by the hum of the ship's engines.

Coming up to a stack of heavy crates labeled 'Rations, Survival', the Commissar triggered her omnitool. The wall paneling next to the crates smoothly split, revealing a small , rubber-floored corridor perhaps twenty feet long, with four doors along it's length. It ended in a circular room, a pair of energy-field containment cells visible along the back wall.

Liara glanced ahead and folded her arms behind her, subtly checking to make sure her neural brace was tight around her forearm. "I do not believe this space is shown on the ship's schematic."

Susan walked ahead of her, stopping to open one of the side doors and motioning her in. "Well, no, it isn't, but that's the Commissariat for you. Hidden tree-houses, decoder rings, secret handshakes. It's like the founders were stuck on old spy movies. Anyway, in you go. It's just my quarters, not a cell."

The room Liara entered into was a tiny, cramped cube. A narrow and hard bed with drab gray sheets was tucked against one wall, a short cabinet at the foot of it taking up that corner. Across from it was a small desk, a little shelf full of old-style paper manuals, an a small weapons rack containing several neural maces and what looked like a sniper rifle.

Liara's own rooms were three times as big. She frowned at the tiny space before glancing about, finally deciding to sit on the only chair. "This is somewhat cramped."

Susan sat on the bed, and pouted, an expression that very nearly made Liara laugh. "Sorry, Commissar's don't get much room. It's just me, Alfred, and the two lancers, so we don't rate much space, I suppose. And I'm so busy I usually just crash out."

Liara sat carefully, maintaining her poise. "What is this place – by that, I mean this entire hidden section – and why did you need to speak with me?"

Susan clasped her hands together. "This is our hidey-hole, Lady Liara. The Commissariat always has one on the bigger ships. Got a little brig, some equipment to handle people who have a problem with authority, and these tiny little bedrooms. Only one restroom and one shower,which means all the hot water is gone if I wait until last to get up."

She pulled a thermos out from the shelf built into the bed, unscrewing the cap and pouring out ice water into two small cups on the top of the cabinet. "It's just water, in case your throat gets dry again. Not that I couldn't use a real drink, but it's against regs. Just about everything is against regs, really. Kind of a drag."

She smiled, but Liara was hardly reassured even as she took a cup. "I cannot fail to note you did not answer my second question, Commissar Susan, as to why I am here."

The woman's smile faded a little. "You're here because of your PRIDE review. You recall the little question and answer session you did with Commissar Jiong on Arcturus after your skills evaluation?

Liara nodded. "I do. I fear he was not happy with my answers. I appreciate the Systems Alliance is important to humans, and now as a citizen it is also important that I support it. But I am … ambivalent about doing so unconditionally. My loyalty is to Sara..."

Susan nodded. "And no one, not even the Commissariat, can blame you for that, Lady Liara. I know from your point of view we probably dropped the ball quite a bit when it comes to Shepard, given her youth and past history. I'm sure that makes it hard for you to see the Alliance in a good light."

Liara sighed. "It is not only that, Commissar. If it is merely loyalty and duty we speak of, then the Systems Alliance at least respects Shepard's sacrifices, if belatedly. That alone is enough to earn my gratitude and respect. I would certainly put their interests above that of my own people at this point." Her voice became bitter. "It seems not even murdering my own mother or nearly dying at her hands is good enough for the Matriarchy or the clanless to hold me blameless."

Liara stared at her hands, laying in her lap. "If I do not hold the fascination many humans seem to for the concept of the Alliance...then at least believe me when I say Sara's duty to it binds me just as tightly."

Susan nodded. "Which is actually what Alfred got out of that conversation." Her expression turned grave, a downturn of the pert mouth that made her pixie-like face seem sorrowful. "But he also determined that you are very seriously hurt, ma'am. Psychologically and emotionally. That is a cause for worry."

Liara tightened her jaw, feeling heat rise to her crest in a mix of embarrassment and anger. "I am stable enough to perform my duties and present no danger to the goals of the Alliance."

Susan shook her head. "We know that." She seemed to struggle with some emotion before continuing, her voice laced with muted frustration. "Lady Liara, I can say with absolute candor that neither I nor Alfred think poorly of you. Your courage in dealing with what had to be a horrific situation with your mother, your ability to handle your isolation, and your bravery were all a part of the report."

She took a sip of the water. "Both he and I had to work very hard to get assigned this post, and while I won't say you were the main reason for it, you were definitely part of it. After being hounded, mistreated and sidelined by your own people and family, you don't deserve that here, and please believe me when I say I'm not here to interrogate you."

Liara folded her arms, her gaze severe. "As with our conversation on Noveria, Commissar, there is more not being said than is being said openly. If I accept your claim that you are not opposed to my being with Sara, then why the concern for my mental stability?"

She sighed. "I suppose that is a fair question. The Commissariat isn't known for it's compassion and playing nice, after all." Susan looked up at Liara blankly. "The hard truth is that Shepard is going to be placed under immense stress soon. Despite her showing a great deal of personal growth in the past few months, you are really all the support she has. It is no exaggeration to say that if something were to happen to you Shepard would fall apart. Possibly even commit suicide."

Liara shivered, but the commissar's lovely voice continued. "She's been hurt all her life. And in a lot of ways, so have you. And neither of you have anyone who is making sure the two of you are going to be okay."

Liara frowned. "My aithntar –"

Susan gave a wan smile. "Is not here, and even if she was, I'm not sure she's the one to help you through this. You didn't actually have any privacy in the hospital room you recovered in. We heard all of the story she told you. She's wracked with guilt and shame for a lot of reasons, and she's been out of your life for a century. From everything we know about her, she is even worse at suppressing and denying grief and loss than you are. Frankly, though, we're not concerned with her."

She sipped her own cup of water. "While I agree that in some ways your father – and David Anderson, and possibly a few others – can be sources of comfort and support, none of them are trained psychological councilors. They all have their own problems to deal with right now. Nor is conventional counseling going to work. A normal psychologist wouldn't have the experience to do much more than suggest you get out of the military and spend the next decade moving past your trauma, which is not an option."

She put the cup down and smiled sadly. "Both you and Major Shepard are psychologically battered right now, and if one of you goes down the other one does too. Shepard is a hard-ass who's endured more than most people, and you're a pretty tough cookie yourself, but sooner or later something is going to snap, and you're both going to pay the price. That's the danger of a bond, is it not?"

Liara shivered again, her mind working. "You feel I am a liability."

Susan shook her head, and actually scowled.. "No. I do not. Give me a little credit. If you were a liability, Lady Liara, you can already guess how the Commissariat would react." She softened her expression. "I … if anything, I am incredibly jealous of you. People discount the power of love,of being able to be one with another person. It always fascinated me about your people, how much strength they drew simply from one another. You are not a liability because you love Shepard, even if that is somewhat unconventional in terms of certain codes of conduct."

She crossed her legs, folding her hands over her knee. "But you are a danger to her if you don't deal with your own issues, Lady Liara. Shepard can't do it alone. She has problems she has to heal, baggage from the past you are all too familiar with. Having to deal with yours on top of that may not be something she can handle. She and Commissar Jiong had a lot to talk about late yesterday regarding your current state of mind... and it was decided that I would talk to you and work with you to see how we can help you move on."

Liara shook her head. "I am afraid it is hardly so simple as that, Commissar. I … have a great deal to work through in my head, that is true." She paused a long moment, considering. "I am not averse to … help, as you put it, although I am unfamiliar with the methods you would use. I do not know how many of my issues are due to my own inadequacies...or even what I am feeling, some days."

Susan tilted her head. "Guilt. Pain. Anger. How much do you hate your mother for what she did...and how much do you hate her for not seeing how badly her disapproval in your earlier years hurt you? How much anger do you have towards the Council of Matriarchs, I wonder? Your family? Your peers at the University of Serrice? How much guilt?"

Liara found herself clenching her fists as Susan spoke, not stopping. "Then there's the other thing you're probably still tearing yourself up about. We recorded a lot of things that happened on the Normandy. I mean, besides the bedroom romp. Mr. Dunn's rather sharp accusations of you using Shepard upset you very badly, almost as badly as what I said did. Shepard interfered in that conversation...but it's a question I think you have probably asked yourself."

She leaned forward. "That question is going to pop up again and again, you know. What hurts you, hurts her. What makes you despair or cry, cuts her like a knife. You can't afford to be weak, Lady Liara, or to languidly drift in her wake, or you will eventually be a liability."

Liara forced herself to relax her hands. "I cannot change myself overnight. I am .. I..." She paused, biting her lip and wondering why she felt a need to cry. "I am doing the best I can to be there for her. To listen when she needs to .. ramble. To be upbeat and remind her we are moving forward into our life. To try and do the best I can with this position I was given to show I support her. Yet I have to pretend I am nothing to her but a friend when others are around. To know that her leaders are still going to be using her as a tool."

She looked at Susan. "It must be easy for you, with your duty and focus, to suppress worrying if you are really good enough. You don't have to lay awake at night racking your brain to find a way to hide the fact that your body hurts and your soul is crying, because someone needs you to be strong."

Susan shook her head. "No, I can't say I have that issue. My conditioning doesn't let me even admit I love someone." Her voice was flat, almost hard now. "So when I say that I'm here to help you, please don't compare what you are going through to me, Lady Liara. As I said, I'm jealous of you. I will never get a chance to say what I feel to the person I care about, much less worry if I'm good enough."

Liara winced. "Conditioning..."

Susan nodded, the smile returning, but sardonic and self-mocking. "Yeah. Commissars are limited by mental blocks, brainwashing and cybernetics to always support the SA and suppress threats to it, all the time. It's not something we control. A part of me is here because someone very …"

She twitched, gritted her teeth,and exhaled, her hands trembling. "... ver...very .. important...to me..." Her voice eased. "...asked me to. Asked me to talk to you. To offer my assistance. To listen and provide what help and advice I can. I don't want to let that person down any more than you want to let Shepard down. But a part of me is doing this because if you are stable, Shepard is. And if Shepard is stable, the SA has one more weapon in it's arsenal."

Liara nodded. "I am sorry – "She stopped, at Susan's upraised hand.

"Lady Liara, don't feel sorrow or pity for my situation. My life and free will are a sacrifice, yes, but one I would willingly pay even if did have a choice. The only difference in my childhood and Shepard's is that I got a nifty interface chip shoved in my spine to orgasm from the whipping and beating I took and handed out, and instead of being picked up by a gang I was picked up by the Commissariat."

Liara's eyes widened in horror, but Susan continued. "People are always shocked because I'm cheerful...but I tell myself everyday that I have everything to be cheerful about. I protect the innocent. I punish the guilty. I stop those on the line of doing wrong from doing so by sheer fear. I get to beat the type of people that abuse little girls into bloody paste, and then I have a martini as I set them on fire." She shrugged. "I tell myself, even if I can't say it or act on it, that I know someone cares about me. I'm not a puppet. I'm a sacrifice, and the whole point of sacrifices is that you give up something to gain something of greater value."

Susan smiled again, and exhaled. "Every day is a blessing that I gain because I will not let my past dictate my future. I sacrifice myself for the people of the Alliance, because no matter how silly or selfish or stupid some may be, no matter how bigoted or blind to the galaxy around them – they're just people. We suffer so others can be at peace. And while I know I'm conditioned...I'd do that even if I _wasn't. _"

She tapped the sash around her slender waist. "I can't change who I am, but I can control how I look at the world around us. So can you. You're a princess of the Thirty, whether or not your people like you or not. You survived fights that would have killed many an asari commando. You went toe to toe with the second most powerful biotic in the galaxy when you weren't 100% and you sent her flying."

She smiled. "You didn't do any of that from weakness, Lady Liara. You did it because you are strong when you have something … someone... to protect and defend. When things get rough Shepard is going to draw on you for that strength, and you can't have it be something you give her only at great cost to yourself, or it will fail you both one day."

Liara shook her head. "Am I not a sacrifice for Sara? Is that not why, in fact, I am sitting here wearing a Systems Alliance uniform, light years from my home?"

Susan giggled. Liara stared at her, and the woman full out erupted in laughter. "Oh...wow. Lady Liara, do you have any idea how many men, women, other asari, and probably a few bent turians would love to be where you are right now, in terms of your relationship with Shepard? Do you think she would be happy if you hurt yourself for her sake? Do you actually think Shepard would sacrifice you for anything?"

She shook her head, still chuckling. "The main reason Shepard doesn't have a perfect PRIDE rating – despite giving over her whole life to the SA – is that we know she is bound to you. We'd never put her in a place where she has to choose between you and her duty because she would choose you. That's not the point."

Susan spread her hands. "The point is that if you can come to grips with your own issues, then you can help her get through the problems she has. The stronger you become, the stronger she becomes. The more you heal the wounds the last year have cut into your soul, the faster you can bandage hers up." She smirked. "And I have every confidence you can be stronger than you are now."

Liara sighed. "And you will help me with this?"

Susan nodded. "As much as I am able to, yes. I have extensive training on asari psychology, especially outcast psychology, both because of my background in usually being assigned to asari citizens of the SA and my own fascination with asari culture. My discretion is absolute. And while I can't guarantee the Commissariat doesn't bug, say, various living quarters or other areas of the ship, I can swear our little hidey-hole is secure. No one – not Alfred, not the SA, not the Commissariat – will hear what you and I speak to one another."

Liara gave her a long look. "Most...mind healing in my race is done through joining and melds."

Susan rolled her eyes. "Yet your suicide rate isn't much better than ours, Lady Liara. Just because someone knows everything about you doesn't mean they can magically fix it. And a lot of issues require the person suffering through them to come to some conclusion, some realization. Messing with memories and the way your people do it is, well, inelegant." She gave a childish looking pout. "It just sucks."

Liara could not help but laugh at her ridiculous expression, a smile breaking out onto Susan's face as she did so. The little commissar hopped up from the bed. "We won't start today. I figure you and the Major will talk about this some privately. I want you to understand that I'm not doing this just to make you a better support for Shepard. The Alliance owes you a great deal as well. From every report, you saved Shepard's life more than once, and without her the geth would have triumphed at the Citadel."

She opened the door leading out. "We owe you to help you with whatever we can. I'll take you back to the science lab,now … but we'll talk later."

Liara nodded. "Very well.

O-ATTWN-O

Tali nervously stood outside the door of Shepard's stateroom, her hands twisting around one another and her foot sliding along the smooth decking in a small pattern.

Her day had been spent in engineering and the core, running through various tests and fixing minor problems humans were too sloppy to see as critical. On a quarian ship, inefficiency was a slow death, and minor problems could pile up into life-threatening issues in a heartbeat. They rarely worked on – or had access to – brand new ships so fresh from the yards that stenciling from where metal was cut and welded hadn't even faded yet.

So some of the challenges – poorly machined hose connections, faulty trip breakers, wiring that never got bundled properly – were new to her. She had a hard time grasping why humans would let some things slide with the attitude of "don't fix it until it's broke", which to her sounded like an excellent way to die of asphyxiation some dark night when a group of minor failures cascaded off one another. To be fair, of course, given the ship was on it's shakedown run, the number of issues she found was actually surprisingly low. That just made her look harder.

She grudgingly admitted the staff working under her was good, maybe better than the Normandy's own tech team. Most of them were younger males overseen by older females – a pattern she had seen elsewhere in the ship. The human males were energetic, impulsive, and brash, the females bossy and more detail oriented.

Her assistant engineer, an older male Lieutenant named Casey Patrick, was a very fussy, organized man with a near-quarian level of attention to detail and an acerbic, biting demeanor that reminded her of her father in many ways, despite the curious nature of his accent. It was clear, after the morning shift, that the man didn't really care for the idea of being her subordinate. Unlike others, however, he didn't let that stop him from doing his job to the best of his ability and giving her a wealth of undocumented practical advice and shortcuts.

The engineering space on the Kazan, while more elaborate and powerful than the Normandy, lacked the same sense of sheer awe-inspiring power. Maybe because the core, as mighty as it was, didn't dominate the entire engine room, or maybe because, unlike the Normandy, the space was brightly lit and expansive.

She had her own little office, crammed with ship displays, blueprints, and status repeaters, a tiny desk filled with engineering manuals thicker than her wrist, and a haptic display and computer system clogged with support tickets for minor repairs all over the ship. She'd worked through this backlog quickly, assigning various techs to the jobs with an eye to their previous experience, and the only thing the Assistant Engineer did was tear into the first man who balked at having to clean the hydroponics filters.

"It's a cruiser, not a cruise ship, ye daft clown. Git down there, mon, and fix that filter afor I cram yer head into a locker."

Tali had chucked at Casey's thick Arcturus accent, and continued assigning jobs. She'd called him into her office to speak privately with him once the engineers were dispatched.

"I'm … still learning a lot about how to do this job. I appreciate all the help you gave me this morning, Lieutenant."

The man folded his beefy arms and stared down at her. "I dinna do it fer you, mumu. But fer the ship, and the team. I can't say what got in the Boss Lady's head to drag ye inta this mess and make you the Chief, but it's not my place ta complain." He scowled. "My duty canna be something I do only when I feel like it, or if the time suits me, seen?"

She nodded. "My people feel much the same way about engineering tasks. They keep the lives of everyone aboard safe and cannot be taken for granted."

Casey had snorted at that, his thick jaw jutting out, the curious braids of his graying hair swaying as he shook his head.. "Ye'll find most people are sloppy and lazy until the first time they get spaced or lose a mate to some such foolishness as not followin' procedures properly. Ye can't just talk sense into them. It has ta be beaten. It's good ye have enough brains in yer helmet to see the Core is the heart of the beast and to treat her with respect. Better that yer training is more than jus' glancing at the telly to see the green status, seen?"

He unfolded arms to rub his chin. "But respect from me or any one else is a thing you will have ta earn. I've a good eight years experience on you, mumu, even if I can't say my electrical or optronics is clean and tight as yer own. I trained that Chief of yers on the Normandy, Adams, and I canna say he did a poor job with ye, but I won't just sit and be eyes about it. If ye fuck something up, we're gonna talk to the Boss Lady, we are."

She nodded. "I can't ask for anything else. If you trained Chief Adams, I'd be happy to learn what you have to teach me. And if I get something wrong, I'd much rather get yelled at by Shepard than have it damage the ship or get someone killed."

The man had grunted in an approving fashion. "At least ye aren't full of yerself. Git out of this cubby, then, mumu, and lets go over ta the LSU for a looksee."

She'd finished the morning learning a great deal about the support machinery aboard larger Alliance ships, which far outstripped anything the Normandy had, or for that matter most quarian ships that weren't liveships. The Kazan could create limited air, grew it's own food, and recycled 99.4% of it's water. There were emergency backups for nearly every critical system, and she began to see why human work seemed so slipshod – no quarian vessel had so many robust and interconnected backup systems.

Her learning experience had been cut short when she'd gotten a terse message on her omni-tool to meet with Shepard in her stateroom at 1700 hours. She'd thanked Casey for his insights and, after wiping down her suit with cleansing towels, made her way to the bridge and the door she stood in front of.

Her omnitool chimed, and she tapped the door panel. "It's Tali, Shepard."

The door opened, and Tali walked in, glancing around the small space. Shepard sat at her desk, which was covered in datapads, closing a dog-eared manual of some kind and tossing it into a drawer in disgust. "Hey, Tali. Have a seat." She rubbed her temples. "I'm starting to think I'm too stupid to do this job."

Tali smiled behind her mask and sat, eying Shepard's posture. She was clearly tired, with an air of being overwhelmed visible in the collection of materials on her desk and the weary set of her shoulders. At the same time, there was a subtle relaxation in her posture, as if she'd been carrying some heavy weight and set it aside.

Shepard swept the pads into a neat stack and set them to one side before facing Tali squarely, hard blue eyes direct and clear. "You needed to speak to me about Joker, you said. I'm sorry I've been tied up with other things, but I figured you wouldn't bring it up unless it was important."

Tali nodded, swallowing. She had no idea how to say what was on her mind, but told herself Shepard was, as she'd told her recently, her friend. "It's … complicated."

Shepard's expression flickered. "I used to think that about Liara, too, Tali. Then I realized it's not. It's hard to just admit the words, sometimes, if you aren't used to doing so. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what to say, but it's not complicated if you just let it out. Scary, maybe."

Tali thought over this and shook her head. "It is scary, but in my case it's also complicated." She forced herself not to wring her hands together. "You already know that my father isn't happy I'm here, and that part of the reason I came along was that I didn't feel ready to go home. I'm happy that you felt I was good enough to serve at this position, and I'm proud to be here."

Shepard smiled. "You earned it, Tali. And frankly, your father is a massive dick. Anything that pisses him off tends to be high on my list of Things To Do."

Tali laughed. "He...he's just worried about me. Too much so. I .. going home would have been like being in a jail. It's not that he doesn't believe in me, but he hates the idea of me getting hurt." She sighed. "I'd never thought I would hear him say he was proud of me, but he did. He doesn't think I'm ready for this, but ..." She shrugged. "That's not what I'm confused about."

Shepard nodded, and Tali continued. "A big part of me agreeing to take this role and come along was from not knowing what to … do... about Jeff. The crew of the Normandy was nice enough, and a few of them went out of their way to help me out, like Wrex and Ashley. But Jeff is …. the one who spent the most time with me, outside of Engineering. Messages on the omnitool. Cheering me up when I ate, or felt lonely. When we started t-talking I didn't.. expect things to go the way they did."

Shepard nodded again. "You aren't the only person who's gone down that road, Tali. It just happens, I suppose."

Tali bit her lip. "Yes, and Jeff had no one to talk to who didn't look down on him, or pity him, or not see how badly their little slights and actions hurt him. I did. I … guess I got a bit closer than I expected, really."

She glanced away, fixing her gaze on the carpet. "On the Flotilla, anyone interested in me was probably doing it because of who my father was. I was isolated from most people, kept within the Zorah sections of the Rayya, one of our Liveships, rather than my father's ship. I wasn't given much choice in what to study or do – I was just trained, in the same way my father was, and his father."

She sighed. "My Pilgrimage was my first time living on my own, making my own choices. I nearly got killed half a dozen times in a few weeks, and when I arrived on your ship I was scared, and lonely. Jeff was the first person who looked past my suit and saw me as a person, not … an asset, who acted as if there was nothing weird about a person who couldn't eat the same food, or show you their face."

Shepard sighed. "I saw you as a very brave young woman who'd risked her life to give us the help we needed, Tali. Not as an asset, or a thing."

She smiled. "I know, Shepard. But it's not the same. You were … are … a little scary. The first time I saw you, in Fist's club... you were terrifying. Unpredictable. Hard to get close to. Your stance, like I said that day in engineering, was like a wall shutting everyone out. I don't mean to say you – or anyone else – treated me badly. Jeff just saw .. more, I guess."

Shepard leaned back. "There's nothing wrong with being attracted or falling in love with someone who sees the person you are, no matter if you're wearing a suit or trapped in your own past. That's how Liara dragged me out of my own personal hell, Tali."

The quarian nodded slowly. "Yeah." She glanced down again. "But I don't know what to do from here. It's not like I can …" She gestured at her suit. "I'm not even human, like he is."

Shepard snorted, and Tali looked up, a bit hurt, before Shepard spoke. "That didn't stop Liara and I, did it?"

Tali sighed. "That's not the same thing, Shepard, and you know it. This suit -"

Shepard made a slashing motion with her hand, mirth fading. "Bullshit. Joker is not the kind of person who minces words or fakes emotions, Tali. If he's interested in you, he doesn't care about that suit, or your being human, or the fact that you doing anything more than hugging him would cause him pain." She sighed. "He's a very badly hurt kid, who may be here less for the right reasons and more to simply rage against God and society that traps him in his flawed body."

She glanced up. "But he's also here for you. And you should know why. YOU, Tali, gave him mobility. Humans had the tech and could have done what you did, but they would have cost too much for him to afford. He'd been trapped in pain and you set him free from that, without asking a thing. You spent time with him and gave him something to hold onto. There's nothing wrong with falling in love, and you shouldn't be surprised he did the same." She paused. "But I do have to ask if you have really figured out yourself what you want."

Tali sighed. "No, I .. I haven't. Part of me wants to go home. Part of me wants to be here. Part of me just wants to take off this damned mask and let him touch me, just one time. I don't want this to be a silly crush, or me … being a silly girl, wishing things were different."

Shepard was silent for several seconds before speaking. "I'm not real good at this sort of thing, Tali. Hell, I couldn't even figure out the problems and wants of people I'd been serving with for years and ended up being blindsided when someone felt they loved me. What happened with Liara was a mix of .. a lot of things, and it could have gone many other ways."

She glanced up, meeting the soft glowing gaze of Tali. "But I can say this – you won't be any happier if you turn your back on your feelings and pretend they aren't there. Maybe you will get hurt and maybe you'll both be better people. But you have to be honest with yourself, first."

Tali swallowed. "I think I'm using him as... as an excuse not to return home. As long as we just … talk and hang out and … wish things that won't ever happen, I can tell myself that I should stay."

Shepard folded her arms. "Tali, running in place like that is crap. Trust me. I did it for a long, long time. But at the same time, you need to make sure that you want to be with him for the right reasons. It can't be just because he makes you feel better about yourself, or feel wanted. And it damned sure can't be because you think convincing him to come with you whenever you head back to your people will translate into you giving them a Pilgrimage gift of worth."

Tali started, badly shaken by that statement, and stammered something, but Shepard cut her off. "He needs you because he's in pain. He's not out here because he loves the Systems Alliance, Tali. He's here for the same reason I was for the longest time. It's an outlet to scream out the pain you feel. You push yourself to be the best so you can tell yourself at night it's okay if no one talks to you. If no one sees the real you. You take pride in your skills because you can't take pride in yourself."

She picked up the top datapad on the small stack she'd made. "This is Commissar Jiong's report on Jeff. You know what it says? Minus the fancy language, he's a bad-ass pilot who wants to be normal. Except he can't. He's got that mouthy streak and that habit of cracking jokes because he's fucking depressed, Tali, so depressed that you may be the only thing in his life that's good."

She leaned forward. "You may think you aren't worth the time. You may worry your dad thinks you're a silly kid. Hell, you may think you came in here to ask me to talk to Joker for you. But you are the only thing he has...and I'm not going to let you shy away from telling him exactly how you feel and that you need him too."

She huffed and leaned back. "I don't have time to run a goddamned love boat, Tali, but I need your head in the game. If I have to I'll have Dallas prep a clean room, take the ship to zero-G, and let you two work out your hormones."

Tali was immensely grateful for the mask that hid her blush, and yet trembled under the harsh crack of Shepard's voice. "I... "

Shepard shook her head. "I don't want to be a hard-ass about this...but it's the only way I got it through my own thick skull that you have to risk being hurt to stop fucking hurting sometimes." She tapped her comm panel. "Pilot Moreau."

Joker's bored voice sounded over the comm. "Yes, Major."

Shepard eyed Tali while she spoke. "Time to the Watson translation, at current speed."

Joker's voice came back a moment later. "Four hours, thirty two minutes. Since we're going at all ahead senior citizen instead of flank. Ma'am."

"Good, and stop with the ma'am bullshit. You only get polite when you're pulling something. Get one of the off-watch pilots to relieve you and report to my stateroom as soon as possible, preferably without breaking anything and bleeding on my brand new cruiser."

"God, what a hater. I'll be there in a few."

She clicked off. "This stateroom is private. I'm going to talk to my marines. You are going to sit here and talk to Jeff. When I come back, I'm going to talk to the both of you." She stood.

Tali sighed. "I don't know if this is a good idea..."

Shepard forced a smile. "Tali, I'm not … good at being a friend, but I'm trying. I danced around my own issues with Liara for a long time before she basically MADE me open my damned eyes and see what a fool I was. Since I can't talk about this in a way to make it all magically better, the least I can do if I call myself your friend is to help you get past the mistake I made."

She turned. "VI, message Lieutenant Cole, Senior Chief Vega, and the senior NCO and Lieutenant of each detachment of marines to meet me in Marine Assembly, on the double."

She tapped her omni a moment later. "Pressly, going below. You have the deck and the conn. Joker's coming off watch for a bit to discuss something, but he'll be back up well before translation. Comm me if anything comes up."

She turned to face Tali. "Just talk, Tali. Trust me."


	5. Chapter 5 : Bonds and Echos

**A/N: **_More than one person has commented or asked about specifics of the things Shepard and Liara are into. The reason I have not (and will not) write explicit scenes with sexual content is simple. They aren't what the story is about. This is pretty much the only time specifics of any kind get mentioned, and that is in an entirely clincal light._

_The only reason I do so now is that it's needed down the line for some of what I set up in later chapters and ME2. I was planning to do this on some level back in OSABC (which is why my warning message was so dire) but decided it robbed the scene of the emotion I wanted. But glossing over it at this point is kind of detracting from the goal of why I included such an aspect in the first place._

_Before my fellow sciencey types jump on me about neutronium, I know it doesn't quite work like that. I'm allowed to move at least a tiny bit away from the super-hard adhesion to science fact every once in a while in the name of the Rule of Crazy Awesome. Besides, Master of Orion did it first._

_Speaking of Crazy Awesome, go read Progman's _**_Flock of Vandals._ **

* * *

"_The funny thing about 'routine' missions is that those are the ones where it all goes to shit."_

– _Admiral Yonis Chu, 'African Bull in a China Shop'_

* * *

"Relay activation imminent. All hands, stand by for transition."

Alfred Jiong grimaced as he toweled moisture from his body, his stomach flip-flopping as the Kazan emerged through the relay. Tying his towel around his waist, he glanced into the tiny mirror on the steel bulkhead in front of him, running his hands through his hair.

He had still not quite gotten adjusted to the cybernetic replacement for his lower right leg, making him nearly lose his balance as the ship corrected course. He glanced down at it, the heavy white medical tape around his still slightly swollen knee discolored with spots of blood, and sighed.

He shaved swiftly, returning to his tiny cubicle to put on some clothes – underwear, a plain white t-shirt, and a pair of workout shorts. He was considering on whether or not to proceed to medical and wait for the doctors who were expected to join them to arrive or just do his physical therapy when Commissar Susan D'Alte opened his door.

He glanced up. "Yes?"

She glanced at he knee and the gleaming metallic limb below it and sighed. "You left your medical package in the holding area. And that tape needs replacement. Sit."

He grunted, levering himself down on the bed, and extended his leg, as she knelt and began unwrapping the tape. Neither of them spoke for long seconds as she removed the tape, even as his expression shifted to one of pain.

The exposed knee joint was discolored and inflamed, and Susan attached a slender fabric patch to it, the surface of the patch containing a small screen that lit up. Her voice was quiet as she read the results.

"It's infected. You should have requested medical leave instead of taking this mission. You haven't even recovered from the beating you took on Virmire, much less the Citadel one."

Jiong's voice was cool. "After arguing my case with such diligence, the option to decline seemed counter-productive to my goals. Even if I did need additional downtime, it would have been detrimental to the security of Major Shepard to not be here." A note of bitterness and frustration had crept into his normally cool tone as she sighed and undid the diagnostic package.

"I could have dealt with it until you recovered, you know. It isn't as if this isn't important to me as well." She opened one of the drawers under Jiong's narrow cot and pulled out a thin black case, opening it to reveal a selection of hypo-spray injectors. She picked up one with red banding around the base and placed it against his knee.

Jiong arched an eyebrow. "I didn't know you knew about my stash of agonals and pain suppressants."

Susan gave the thinnest of smiles, but didn't say anything, focusing on the knee. Several minutes of silence passed as she worked, finishing by re-wrapping the knee in new medical tape and sealing it with medigel under a slight layer of omnigel.

She looked up from where she knelt on the floor, meeting his gaze. "You'll still have to get some antibiotics for this. And probably a good doctor to look it over. You need to be careful, Alfred. You can't protect her, or anyone else, if you cripple yourself in your zeal."

Jiong shook his head. "I do not fear her inability to take care of herself in a physical sense. But I pushed myself to make this trip, even if I am not fully ready physically, because she needs an adviser who is … "

She snorted. "If you say 'trustworthy' I may hit you with my mace. Just because the Guidance Cadre hasn't given us any appalling orders yet doesn't mean they won't, and it's not like we can say no."

His features shifted into an expression of agitation at that. "If she cannot trust us, Susan, there are few others for her rely to upon. I will not simply let the Cadre tell us to ruin a hero of the Systems Alliance. She deserves more than that."

He experimentally flexed his knee, and the expression on his face eased. "Thank you." His voice was softer than usual, and she turned away, busying herself with putting up the leftover medical supplies. He didn't say anything for several seconds, before sighing and rubbing his temples. "How did your talk with Ms. T'Soni go?"

When she spoke, her voice was tense. "Lady Liara is more of a mess than you thought. I don't think she recognizes it, but I saw signs of bond imprinting."

Jiong frowned. "I specialized in salarians. What is this bond imprinting?"

Susan dumped the last of the trash into the tiny wastebasket by Jiong's desk before standing. "A condition where two bondmates begin affecting each others reflexive reactions and possibly mental states. She demonstrated several extremely human actions during our interview, including arching an eyebrow."

Jiong shrugged, and Susan sighed. "Alfred, asari don't _have_ eyebrows. Lady Liara's marks are just tattoos. That isn't the same sort of adoption as turians borrowing the human nod, it's a muscle reaction that comes from two bonded partners who have nearly aligned neural systems."

Jiong stood, testing his weight. "I fail to see the problem, but I trust this is not a good thing?"

She stood as well. "No. Bondmates are expected to … align gradually. Over years, even decades. Whatever they're doing is making them bond more deeply and rapidly than is even remotely safe. There is every possibility that Lady Liara could become mentally unbalanced... or, if we get really unlucky, pregnant."

Jiong folded his arms. "I will admit the asari version of the birds and the bees was not something I paid much attention to, but I was under the impression pregnancy was voluntary for them."

Susan sighed. "That is because most don't have the biotic strength to form the proper kind of channels when they are young, and because most links are too shallow and stay that way until they bond properly as matrons. Liara is so young that I doubt she has control over how her body will react and she may not even recognize the signs – it's something mothers or fathers teach their daughters in their second century, and Liara left hers at fifty!"

Jiong rubbed his temples. "That will be a fascinating discussion to get into with Shepard, right up there with getting around to telling her about Anderson's connections to Cerberus. What can we do to prevent this from becoming a complication, such as her blowing our heads off in anger?"

Susan folded her arms, leaning against the wall. "Talk to them about it."

Jiong shook his head. "I don't know if I can. Just going over the PRIDE ratings with her was bad enough. Touching on this is likely to produce an emotional reaction of even greater magnitude, and her own psychological condition is fragile enough that it could do more harm than good. She still has not fully convinced herself she is good for Ms. T'Soni, after all.."

Susan nodded. "It may be better to go through Lady Liara for this, since she is more … mm. Less given to bursts of emotion, or at least less likely to break from such bursts?" She let her arms fall to her sides. "We still have a little time to go over it all, and we have to keep an eye on the ongoing mission of the ship and crew as well."

Jiong wearily nodded. "I still need to perform my physical therapy. I trust you can be available to interview the incoming medical team and keep an eye on Shepard?"

She smiled and tilted her head. "Yeah. I can do that." She glanced at his knee again, then back up at his face. "Are you going to be okay?"

Jiong gave her the best smile he could. "No. But ours is to serve and endure, is it not?" He squeezed her shoulder, until it hurt both her shoulder and his hand, their expressions coldly locked into masks of polite cheer, and then he was gone.

That contact was the best they could do on most days, and Susan didn't try to rub her shoulder or relieve the pain as she left his quarters to return to her own. It was the only way to acknowledge anything.

Instead of letting herself fall into thinking about things that might never be, she busied herself with reviewing her materials on asari physiology. Whatever their personal feelings might be, the mission she and Jiong were given was brutally clear. Preserve Shepard at all costs. If that meant catering to whatever complications Liara caused, then she would do so.

After all, her conditioning wouldn't allow her to fail.

O-ATTWN-O

"Watson Command, this is SCB83 Kazan, requesting security envelope clearance and docking guidance to Scorpion, over." Ensign Traynor's elegant accent wafted across the bridge as Shepard sat at her station, looming over the plot below, her eyes flitting across the status screens above and below her.

Watson was one of the main member colonies of the Alliance, but had suffered from a heavy pirate attack almost twenty years ago despite the defenses the world had at the time. Politicians had spent a great deal of time, money and hot air on turning Watson into a literal fortress world.

Four class C battle stations, each festooned with weapons and packed with fighter ships, rotated serenely above the surface of the planet, along with half a dozen heavy industrial weapons factories. The ground forces on the planet itself were heavy, stiffened by thousands of asari immigrants who'd become SA citizens by way of four years of military service, making Watson's armies the most potent biotic force in the SA. The planet had nearly as many GARDIAN laser towers and heavy GTS batteries as Earth itself, and it's colony buildings were now carved out of deep mountain ranges and hidden under dozens of feet of duraplate.

As a result, entering into orbit around Watson wasn't as simple as pulling up to the docks on Arcturus or the Citadel. Shepard watched her plot as a squadron of fighters followed by a scout frigate flew by, no doubt scanning the ship carefully. In the distance, a trio of heavy missile cruisers squatted threateningly just out of active ECM range.

Liara, standing quietly at her station, watched her displays carefully. After conferring with the tech next to her, she spoke. "High energy particle scan of the ship is being conducted, Major. The missile cruisers in low elliptical orbit have missile acquisition radar turned on."

Pressly muttered under his breath as he watched the plot. "Paranoid bastards."

Liara shrugged, pausing to give a small smile to this, and Shepard nodded at her. Liara had been acting weird since mid-afternoon, but they'd not had a chance to talk yet. Rather than pry, she tried to project her trust and faith in Liara across the bond they shared.

She was still figuring out aspects of that bond. She'd done some reading in her tiny amounts of spare time, and the bond they had was, as Liara had spoken of on the Citadel, deeper than most asari achieved with non-asari partners. Maybe it was because she was also biotic, or maybe because of the Beacon or something else. Strong bonds were dangerous to young maidens because they were typically too weak to control them fully, but Shepard had snorted at the idea of Liara being 'weak'.

Her thoughts were broken by the hard voice of Watson's comm officer responding to their hail.

"Kazan, this is Watson Orbital Command. Your clearance for approach to Scorpion is approved. Follow the guide beacon on relative course one nine zero tac five for initial approach. Your destroyer escort squadron will be required to stay outside the security envelope. Scorpion will provide final approach and docking guidance. Upon dock and security cordon establishment, weapons transfer will begin. Additionally, Lieutenant Commander Sedanya and associated medical team will be boarding your ship during the evolution."

Shepard arched an eyebrow at the name. 'Sedanya' sounded asari, not human.

_Great. She's sure to just love what Li and I get up to. _

Pushing back on that thought, she nodded to Traynor, who spoke. "Acknowledged, Watson Orbital. Course change in fifteen seconds. We will have weapons handling teams ready for ordinance transfer once docking is completed. Kazan out."

Shepard sighed. "Thank you, Ensign. Go ahead and signal the captain of the Denver to withdraw the destroyer escort to the relay, we'll link up with them on our way out of the system."

She tapped the comm panel on her CO station. "Helm, bring us to one nine zero tac five in ten seconds. Weapons, have a handling party standing by to onload ordinance. Pressly, you have the deck and conn, I'm headed down to greet our doctor when they arrive."

Picking up the 1MC she spoke clearly. "All hands stand by for docking. Leave is not set. Security team alpha, report to starboard access, set security level five for weapons transfer. Stand down from general operations. Well done so far, Kazan."

Clicking off, she stood up from her chair. "Ms. Traynor, Liara, Mr. Patrick, you can stand down as well. Won't need engineering, comms or science for the next few hours. Joker can handle final approach communications."

She turned to enter the elevator, and wasn't surprised Liara managed to get aboard alongside her. She tapped the deck control for deck four before turning to face her. "Is everything okay? You feel out of sorts, Liara."

The asari smiled. "I am only thoughtful, Sara. I merely have a great deal to think about. I had a conversation with Commissar Susan that was … disquieting to me." She gently took Shepard's hand for a moment and squeezed before letting go. "I will be fine, however. I do not wish to distract you from your duties."

Shepard smiled back helplessly, Liara's presence blowing away any worries she had. "I'm fine. A little concerned about this Lieutenant Commander Sedanya. That name sounds asari."

Liara nodded. "If she is a medical doctor, then she will have been among the Clans. Few asari take up medical professions from the clanless, and .. well. Most of the Thirty would consider such a profession beneath them. If she is asari, then perhaps I should come along as well?"

Shepard shrugged. "Can't hurt. Besides, Medical reports to the Science officer anyway, so you make more sense than dragging Pressly along." She paused. "Speaking of asari, have you talked to the two asari we have on board already?"

Liara sighed. "Yes, I did. They are both immigrants from the outlying asari colonies, not the Republic. They were still rather too deferential around me, but I was able, I believe, to make them understand that I do not expect and will not tolerate the sort of deference Telanya demonstrated."

Shepard smirked. "Of course, Lady Liara."

Liara punched her shoulder. "Stop that, before you start the crew on it, Baroness Shepard." Still she smiled, and that's all Shepard was aiming for at the moment.

The docking went smoothly, and Shepard made sure that Cole deployed marines along the docking area and ports, alongside the security forces from the Scorpion weapons station, to oversee the move. Disruptor torpedoes were dangerous, but the new torpedoes that Colms had designed and that were being onloaded were flat out terrifying.

Degenerate matter was better known as neutronium, the hyper-compressed material formed when a star underwent secondary collapse after stellar fusion failed, but wasn't massive enough to be a black hole. The star collapsed into a neutron star, a stellar mass only a few miles wide, and it's entire mass was crushed into a material that weighed a ton per tablespoon.

Neutronium was almost indestructible, but making armor or anything else out of it was impossible due to it's nature. The only reason the material was stable was the titanic mass of the neutron star. Once removed, the material exploded back out of it's compressed state, throwing off enormous amounts of energy and hard radiation as well as kinetic force.

The SA had managed to stabilize tiny flecks of neutronium using powerful mass effect fields, and it was these flecks that tipped the torpedoes being loaded. When they struck a target, the mass effect field would cut off and the two inch flek of neutronium would expand to a sphere of burning energy and plasma some five hundred feet in diameter. The kinetic shock wave from the expansion would crush a dreadnaught's shields like paper, much less anything smaller than that, while sprays of x-ray and gamma radiation would tear into the surroundings with enough strength to kill krogan. The merely physical aspects of the burning plasma at several million degrees would be small fries after all that.

The Kyle-class torpedo was part of a series of weapons devised by BuWeaps (and Lieutenant Commander Colms prior to his transfer) as both a reaction to the Eden Prime disaster as well as the increasing mismatch between the SA and alien fleets. While the SA navy had increased in size until it was a major player on paper, their electronics, shielding and weapons were not up to par with turian models, much less the far more advanced asari or salarian ships. Salarian GARDIAN arrays and mass drivers were estimated to be 600% more efficient, while asari mass accelerators on their cruisers rivaled the main weapons on SA dreadnaughts. While the missile technology the Alliance had bought from the volus that lead to the Spearfish had doubled the Alliance's firepower, they were hard to produce and too vulnerable to ECM to be a true clinch weapons system.

The cost to build the new torpedoes was ruinous – Shepard had blinked at realizing each one cost as much to make as a fighter – but their killing power and, more important, threat value were enormous. These weapons could be fitted on anything down to a heavy frigate, and even one would smash a cruiser into a burning wreck. With the new launcher making reaction and evasion much more difficult, a ship with the Kyle-class torpedo could threaten and stand off even ships of the line with impunity.

Of course, they had to be tested, and then the process approved. And given that the SA could only mine a few pounds of neutronium a year, their supply would be sharply limited. She'd been told she'd get forty torpedoes, but only five of them were the Kyle-class, the rest were standard M-AM matrix disruptors.

As a result, the onloading was done very carefully, with a great deal of security checking, safety checklists and barked orders. Shepard watched the evolution keenly, chatting with Liara about the details of the weapons, amusing herself with listening as Liara went into theories about Prothean weapons systems. It was nice to be able to just watch and talk and not have to worry about pointy-faced bastards blowing up planets.

About halfway through this process, as the loading team waited for another batch of weapons, a small group of officers with the flash of Alliance Medical Corps staff on their green and white uniforms entered the boarding tube.

There were seven of them. Three enlisted human females, two older looking male officers with the air of doctors, and two young ensigns, one male and one female, in light marine armor – probably corpsmen.

Leading them was a willowy asari, shorter than Liara. She had a rather narrow crest and dark blue skin, with triangular facial markings trailing along her cheeks and a stylized Alliance 'A' on her throat. She wore the uniform of a lieutenant commander, and approached Shepard and Liara confidently. "Major-Commander Shepard. I am Doctor Sedanya, lieutenant commander, Watson Medical Corps, First Watson Army Group. My staff and I have been seconded to the Kazan to serve as your medical unit."

She saluted sharply, as did her people, and Shepard returned it with precision. "Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Commander. This is Lieutenant Commander Liara T'Soni, the ship's science officer. The XO is occupied with the load but we'll have a briefing once we get back to Arcturus anyway."

The asari gave Liara a sharp look before nodding briskly. "Not to disrupt military discipline, Major, but..." She turned to face Liara fully, bowing deeply. "I am matron Sedanya of Clan Lifeshaper, child of Irayasi, fifth moon-blessed of the Clan. I am honored to serve aboard a vessel with a member of the Thirty, honor upon their houses."

Liara stiffened but inclined her head shallowly. "I am Liara , of House T'Soni, child of .. Aethyta Vasir, of the line of Nathess T'Soni who slew the Silent Queen. I fear my courtesy is lacking, as I have no chathesi aboard this vessel, but I welcome your aid and counsel."

Shepard flinched when she mentioned Aethyta instead of Benezia, but Sedanya merely smiled sadly and nodded. "You honor me, Lady Liara." She straightened, politely turning to face them both rather than just Liara. "I was dispatched after a great deal of … what is the human term? Wangling? Whanging? Conducted between General Dominzi and one General von Grath."

Shepard snorted. "Wrangling, Lieutenant Commander. The art of arguing. That's because General von Grath took my old doctor, who had experience with asari and quarian medicine, for his own unit. I wasn't comfortable going into possible combat with a human medical specialist with no experience in alien biology, and the only ones on Arcturus who fit that bill were graduate students."

Sedanya nodded again. "Given the large number of asari on Watson and our presence in the Alliance military, I assure you I am at least very able at healing my fellow asari as well as humans, but I have spent the past eighteen years also working on salarians, the occasional quarian miner, turians – even hanar."

Shepard smiled. "We have one quarian aboard, our chief engineer, so that experience will come in handy."

Sedanya folded her arms. "My staff is two surgeons, Lieutenants Peter Vales and Ronald Sang. Both also have experience with asari patients. I also have a pair of battle-trained triage medics, Sergeants Talitha Patel and Ross Davidson. Finally, my personally trained team of medical assistants – Chief Julia Renolds, and Specialists Amy Wildse and Shield Ean." She turned to them. "Chief, go ahead and set up our equipment in medical, and make sure trauma is ready to go. Last time I was on a shakedown run, a conduit exploded and we had heavy electrical burns. Lieutenant Vales, make sure our medical supplies get onloaded and get together with the ship's supply officer on what else we need."

The medics swept past, and Sedanya folded her arms. "General von Grath sent a message saying you were _particularly_ stubborn and difficult about injuries, Major. I am not above using my biotics to keep you in bed if you try to leave medical early should you be wounded, and I am not at all happy you are up and around after your heroics at the Citadel."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Christ, all doctors are dictators." She smiled after that. "My previous doctor used to fuss at me for getting up too quickly, but … well, the situation was dire many times."

Sedanya nodded. "Yes, it was. My bondmate and daughters were actually on the Citadel at the time of the attack, and survived unharmed. It is the least I can do to provide medical services for you and your ship, Major." She folded her arms. "However, I have not been sent your medical record. It's classified higher than even Todd – General Dominzi , that is – could clear."

Shepard noted Sedanya's familiarity with the general – she'd worked alongside von Grath for years and rarely, if ever, had called him Jason. Shrugging that aside, she motioned to the elevator. "It's a long and … delicate story, Lieutenant Commander."

Liara followed. "I'm afraid if you wish all the details, you will have to swear to at least the Eight Oath of Sublimation, if not the Sixth."

Shepard sighed. She'd not picked up a lot of asari culture during her brief stint training the dancing kanquess with asari commandos, but she was made very aware of the Nine Oaths. They were used whenever asari had to take acts that would cut against the grain of asari unity or tradition. The Justicars and Priestesses of Athame were the most common partakers of such things, but all asari respected the Oaths.

The Eight Oath of Sublimation was a promise on the swearer's prosperity and position that information shared with the person could not be repeated, and bound them as well as their bondmate. It was typically chosen when asari had to learn something dangerous that they might have to share with bondmates, and was often used by high ranking asari political types. Any asari bonded to Alliance Military personnel had to swear it, even if they were just bonded to a simple sergeant. If the sworn oath was broken, the violator would answer to the Justicars, or for SA asari who swore it, the Commissars.

Shepard wasn't sure there was much difference in who they answered to, except in the color of fire you'd die by.

Sedanya pursed her lips, but then bowed and made a gesture with her hands of siari acceptance. "I had not expected that, but it is not unheard of to require such, even in the Systems Alliance military. How important is this … information? I will keep silent on whatever you wish, and will swear to the Eighth with no reservations, but I am certainly not prepared to swear the Sixth."

Shepard shook her head angrily. "No, the Sixth will not be needed." In her mind the Sixth Oath was disgusting, a promise to commit suicide if a confidence or trust was breached, to treat the person the oath was sworn to as more important than their own lives. "But I must agree with Liara that some of what you will be hearing is very delicate and requires the utmost discretion. At the very least, it would ruin both of our lives, and quite possibly get us in very severe trouble."

Sedanya nodded. Whatever it was made Shepard nervous, and it did not bear thinking what would make such a hardened woman feel nervous. "I have no objections, then." She knelt quietly. "I swear myself to your secrecy, and pledge blood upon my line and bonds. Your secrets are my secrets. My lips and my thoughts will not betray you, nor those I love more than life. This trust I shall not break, lest my name be known as forfeit to Athame's justice."

Shepard nodded, and gestured for her to get up. "In that case, we should head up to my stateroom to discuss this in private. I think the loading is going well enough I don't need to stare at my people any longer."

The three turned to the elevator, which opened to reveal the slender form of Commissar Susan D'Alte. She smiled brightly, coming to sharp attention. "Major Shepard! Just who I was looking for."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "And you are..."

Susan stepped off the elevator. "Commissar-Captain Susan D'Alte. Assisting Commissar Jiong."

Shepard narrowed her eyes. "Ah. Liara has spoken of you but we've never met. You said you were looking for me, is something wrong?"

The woman shook her head, her cheer evident. "Not at all, ma'am! I was actually coming to see if our medics were here – Alfred is being stubborn about difficulties he's having with his leg replacement, and I also have to do their initial PRIDE interview."

Sedanya smiled thinly, pulling an OSD out from her uniform breast pocket. "Commissar-Major Halyan expected your request and conducted a PRIDE evaluation of my team and myself yesterday, once orders came through. He said he would be available if you had concerns. The medics should be in the medical bay, and I will be by shortly."

Susan took the OSD and clipped it's end against her omnitool, smiling wider as it glowed green. "Sweet, I hate doing those things. In that case, I'll just do a background check later on, and we should be good." She paused. "I do need to talk to you, Major, when you have time, but it's nothing urgent."

Shepard gave her a wary nod. "I was just about to brief Dr. Sedanya on … certain issues." Her eyes cut to Liara, then back to Susan. "Would you need to sit in on that, or Jiong?"

Susan shook her head. "Nope. You're both big girls, you got it. I'm off to talk to Jack Halyan, haven't seen him in ages. I'll back on board for departure. Nice meeting you, Dr. Sedanya." With another happy smile, she sashayed off, and Shepard shook her head.

Sedanya gave a thin frown. "That woman is entirely too happy to be a Commissar."

Shepard nodded. "No shit. The smiling really threw me."

Liara sighed. "She is .. not as happy as she appears."

Shepard glanced at her, and then thought back to what Jiong had told her. "I don't think any of them are, Liara. Anyway, we might as well get this over with. Follow me, Doc."

It took five minutes for Shepard, Liara and Sedanya to reach Shepard's stateroom. Shepard sat at her desk, glancing over the status displays before tapping her comm unit. "Pressly, I'm in my stateroom, tied up with medical stuff. The onloading is going fine – you shouldn't need to supervise. Comm me when we're loaded up and ready to roll."

Pressly's voice was calm as usual. "Of course, Major. Everything seems nominal for the moment."

Shepard clicked off and faced the two asari in front of her squarely. "Doctor, there's some complications you need to know about."

O-ATTWN-O

Doctor Sedanya sat in her own office later that day, watching her people finish up their work in the Kazan's medical bay. The large open space and attached trauma area was done in gleaming stainless steel and pure white panels, with antiseptic decking and ceiling mount equipment studding the space. The ship was leaving Watson's system, headed out to deeper space to finish the trials, and she doubted her skills would be called upon anytime soon.

She found herself troubled, and lost in her thoughts, she looked out through the portal separating her office from the medbay. A twenty bed medical bay with trauma center, lab, and office was a nice step up from medevac tents and a closet with a pair of chemlights for an office. The money from shifting her service to space-side would be nice, and of course being attached to a name as prestigious as Shepard's would hardly hurt her career. She could afford to move Shovae and her daughters out of that tiny apartment and maybe even to the luxuries of Arcturus Station.

But her mind wasn't on the nice new job she had, or her improved fortunes. It was on the conversation she'd had with Shepard and Liara, and how neatly she was trapped in assisting in something she had very serious reservations about.

What a twisted dance they had, those two. She wasn't sure whether to pity them or admire them, legendary hero and tragic princess. A story fit for any echas novel, save for the dark truths she'd been told.

Learning Shepard and Liara planned to handfast, or marry as the humans called it, had been a shock, but hardly one that was unpleasant. She could see, in the privacy of the stateroom, the subtle hints of a bonding, and while she was rather unsure of the propriety of bonds at such a young age, it was hardly her place to upbraid a princess of the Thirty. Certainly it would be a bold statement to both human and asari culture, and one some would have issues with. If that had been the totality of the issue, she'd have congratulated them and had no problems keeping that little plan close to her crest.

No, that wasn't what had her thoughts lost in the currents either.

She was hardly familiar with human sexuality, given that her bondmate was drell – and honestly, she found most humans a touch too jealous and clingy for her taste. She'd never linked with a human. Humans seemed unable to control their mating urges, and their idea of sensuality was too crass and frankly male-driven to be of interest to her, professional or personal.

Still, she had at least thought she had some concept of it – a few nerve sensitive areas, not too different from turians or drell males and females. The women were nice to look at, very much like asari but without the ugly risk of ardat-yakshi. Liara was hardly unique in being attracted to a beautiful human female. That bothered her not at all.

The description of what Shepard and Liara did in the privacy of their lovemaking was quite disturbing, and definitely not what she'd been expecting. Review of the medical records of Shepard and Liara showed a series of severe burns, cuts, abrasions, and other damage, as well as strained muscles and what were clearly over-extended internal injuries. Protein and calcium buildup around the joints of the human's hips. Deformation of the cartilage near the azure on the asari. Biotic usage. Probably more, at some point she just shut the record off and decided any additional details would be counterproductive to know.

The two of them had been relatively discrete, she supposed, and able to play such wounds off as 'battle damage' to the medics on the Citadel. Who could say otherwise, given the repeated and regular fights they got in. Now, with such easy explanations out of reach given their current peaceful mission, they needed someone to cover for them.

She'd asked a few questions about why they did this and what exactly it entailed, which had gone nowhere fast. Shepard's rather halting explanation had been augmented by Liara's less embarrassed if less detailed clarifications, but the message was clear enough. They both enjoyed it and had no intentions of changing or stopping.

Her idea of lovemaking was hardly the injuries these two put each other through, but if that was what flared Liara's midnight, there was little Sedanya could do about it this point. Liara was clearly not only a willing participant but probably did more damage to Shepard than Shepard did to her. The injuries to the azure, midnight and other areas of Liara's body would seem to indicate that she was enjoying it as well, and that was definitely nothing she'd seen before.

She had agreed to ensure their injures were handled by her alone and not entered into the medical log, and Shepard had said she had already taken steps to have medical equipment on hand in their living areas. That was at least reassuring.

She'd explained very carefully that some of the things they did could lead to more severe injuries, and that repeated injuries to the same place on asari could lead to nervous system issues. She implored them to exercise a little more restraint, and then left the stateroom before she could get herself in trouble by saying something disrespectful.

It wasn't really her business, after all, and on reflection she decided that in a universe where shit like scale-itch infestations could break out among asari, turians, and humans, what they got into in the bedroom could have been worse.

No, what shook her to the core and made her seriously question the ethics of not demanding a release from her oath were all the signs of bond imprinting and echo resonsance she saw between the two. Bonding at such early ages was already very dangerous. And the kinds of activity they were doing to each other tended to only make control of the bond during sexual encounters more difficult to control and thus, more dangerous. Bond imprinting was not something to take lightly - there were quite a few asari taboos that stopped matriarchs from bonding with maidens for any reason. Imbalanced bond imprinting could lead to sharp emotional shifts, changes in loyalties, even neural issues as a brain stopped understanding which body it was supposed to belong to.

Echo resonance was worse, and something she was finding it difficult to overlook. Rarely explained to non-asari due to the fact it almost never happened, echo resonance was when the bioelectrical connection between two bondmates was augmented by their own biotic fields. Rather than the connection being a shallow sense that only was felt when in very close proximity, echo resonance could connect two such linked lovers across miles. The constant back and forth became grounded in each bondmates biotic fields, and if one was killed the other would almost certainly suffer catastrophic biotic damage or death.

She'd seen six cases of echo resonance collapses, and five of them were brain-dead vegetables. The sixth had literally burned herself to death with her own warpfire rather than deal with the agony.

The combination of a strong bond imprint, severe echo resonance, and pain-amplified force driving the bond deeper every time they had sex meant it was very likely that Shepard and Liara were altering each other's psyches and memories on a much deeper level than either would be able to control. Asari had evolved along such lines that neural rearraingments of that nature were not damaging, but humans had not. There was also a psychological aspect to this, as well, and one she didn't like, but she was a medical professional, not a mind healer or bonding adviser. She doubted either would listen to her worries about the danger they were in, much less think about the larger consequences.

Shepard and Liara handfasting, fine.

Doing whatever injured them that much, kinds of messed up, but fine.

But if Shepard was killed due to bond imbalances or driven insane through echo resonance failure, Sedanya did not want to think how humans would take it. The first human Spectre, dying due to her sexcapades with her asari lover, who was the daughter of an asari traitor who'd threatened the galaxy? And on top of that, a pureblood? Most asari would immediately assume Liara to be ardat-yakshi. The Thirty would try to stonewall an investigation to conceal the ugly truths about the ardat-yakshi, the Alliance would not stand for such acts and demand answers. The woman was the human president's handpicked personal champion, there was no way to cover it up. The ramifications of the wider galaxy learning about the ardat-yakshi were horrifying enough, but that wouldn't be the end of the chaos. Human and asari releations were unlikely to stay calm. The schism humanity had already caused in the Asari Republic, with over seventeen million asari flocking to human worlds, would be torn wider.

Goddess only knew what the salarians, turians, or others would do.

This was not her being a prude about deviant bedroom acts, or overly traditional about the proper time for a maiden to leave her path for that of the matron. This could be a serious threat to relations between the asari and humans, between asari and every other race out there.

With a moue of disgust on her lips, she set up a partition on her personal network to record her notes, careful to avoid names or even physical descriptions. Then she went to work on searching the Hearthwatch Clan's media archives and trying to put together a better picture of how this nightmare situation had occurred.

When her results on Shepard came back, full of gruesome images of humanity's child-sex slave markets and disgusting video snippets of the tortures some snuff-gangs put together, along with news reports and media tabloid spread about Shepard's ugly early life, she suddenly understood where Shepard had gone off the beach. She'd probably never had a 'normal' sexual encounter in her entire life, and the information she had indicated such gangs brainwashed or altered their victims to enjoy their torment.

Searches about House T'Soni brought back a depressing tale of a mother too busy with her own plans and preaching to pay the correct amount of attention to her daughter, an aithntar who'd run off for a century, a house lost in it's old glories, and a pureblood maiden so painfully shy that from all the social gossip, not a single asari could claim to even having a shallow link with. Liara T'Soni had admitted she'd had no melds or sexual contacts prior to Shepard – and thus, in the aftermath of a bonding more akin to a matriarch's than a maidens, Shepard had unwittingly imprinted her young lover with her own issues, and Liara had probably been unable to control the bond strength.

Given they were broken people holding each other together, trying to convince them to stop their relationship out of duty to the SA or the asari people was a laughable stupid concept. Sedanya figured she'd be lucky to escape with her life to even suggest such a thing.

The asari doctor sat back in her chair with a pained expression. She couldn't speak to anyone about this, of course. As dire as the situation was, the best she could do was attempt to mitigate the damage and start crash studying methods of bond stabilization and echo repression. And if need be, ensure if something did happen that would implicate the bond between the two as the problem, get rid of the evidence.

Standing up from her chair and walking over to the window into the med bay proper, Sedanya wondered if she was doing the right thing...or if she was going along with it because of the benefits her new job brought her.

She could only hope it was the former.

O-ATTWN-O

The Kazan and her escort of destroyers emerged into the dull vastness of the Lenal system early the next morning. A main G-sequence star with a small turian colony and a single Ashland-Eldfell HE mining operation, the only thing of note in the system was it's large asteroid belt of nickel-iron, which was on occasion mined by turian corporations.

Weapons testing – translation , blow up rocks – was likely to be mind-numbingly boring, and Shepard was starting to miss the excitement of being on the Normandy, with clear goals and something to do all the time. She waited patiently for Joker to stabilize the ships course, and for the jump-shock to clear from the sensors and comm antenna that were being extended so they could chat with the turians and get about it.

Thus, when Liara's eyes narrowed and she ordered her subordinates to deploy two wide-spectrum probes, Shepard was immediately on her guard. "What is it?"

Liara's eyes were moving rapidly over her sensor readouts, and she bit her lip. "The moment the sensors deployed we picked up heavy bursts of x-rays, as well as flow disturbances in the solar wake of the system. There is wreckage in orbit over Trigenta Petra, the turian colony, and more wreckage near the HE-3 station at Nutus, the gas giant."

Traynor hit several commands, then shook her head. "No response to any comms request, Major. The turian repeater buoy in the system is also not responding."

Shepard grimaced, punching her controls. "All hands, battle stations. Set condition 4SR, security team alpha and charlie, set repel boarders. Squadron Commander Lisken, report to the Bridge." She snapped off and tapped the battle stations alarm, the bridge darkened from bright white to the duller red of combat.

Pressly was already in motion, supervising Ops Alley, and Colms was bringing up the ship's defenses. "Major, all kinetic barriers online. Powering weapons and removing interlocks on missile banks. I suggest loading only standard torpedoes at this time."

"Affirmative, Weapons. Get the guns hot and you have authorization to arm disruptor torpedoes." She glanced to the side as the senior flight officer of her six fighters came out of the elevator. Jackson Lee Lisken was a tall slender man with the build of a spacer. Cool gray eyes met hers as he saluted, his otherwise plain looks a trifle blurred, as if he'd just woken up. "Reporting as ordered, ma'am."

She nodded. "A moment, SC. Liara?"

Liara was talking quietly to Vincent Madel, and looked up. "Probes are away but we are still looking over the data. Discharges of heavy missiles, however, seem to fit the pattern we are seeing.."

Madel was working his own panel furiously, almost a match for how fast Shepard remembered Joker tearing through menus and panels. "Best fit on the readings is probably batarians, Major. There's definitely signatures of positrons, which is how they set off their missiles. At least four ships, weight classification either heavy destroyer or light cruiser."

Shepard turned to Lisken. "Get your squadron out there, put up a screen around us. I've seen plenty of batarian pirate strikes, they like tossing out mines to cover their tracks, so be careful."

He nodded. "We'll launch in five, ma'am." With that he was gone, and Shepard turned back to Traynor. "Inform our escort of the problem. We will investigate the station and colony, they are to ensure nothing is incoming from the relay."

Traynor nodded, and Shepard got up, walking over to the plot. "No sensor contacts at all? Civilian ships? Anything?"

Liara shook her head. "Aside from two bands of wreckage that would match signatures of turian cruisers, no."

Shepard frowned. "Doesn't make sense. Standard turian colony defense is at least four cruisers on even a pissant colony, and a handful of system patrol boats. Four shitty batarian ships with missiles couldn't take them, the colony GTS, and a heavily armed fueling station." She glanced back at the other science tech. "Mr. Madel, how sure are you on that batarian classification? This is very far out of their usual stomping grounds."

The young man shrugged. "I'm sorry, ma'am. There's no wreckage of anything but turian ships, four wake trails leading towards the Omega Nebula, and positron emissions. I figured they were batarian pirates operating out of Omega."

Shepard shook her head. "That bitch Aria isn't stupid enough to let her thugs poach on a Hierarchy colony." She tapped her comms panel. "Joker, take us in, flyby past the HE3 station. High observable, make sure we're ready to fight."

She sat and waited, the plot updating the tiny blips of her fighters arcing out and forming a protective cordon. Eight minutes later, Liara frowned.

"Initial scans of the station show several structural and external damage. The patterns do not match the signatures the computer gives me for batarian weapons."

Madel had a confused look on his face. "Those are impacts from a collapsing-wave mass accelerator – salarian weapons technology, not something pirates would have. And there's...holy shit. Ion particulates..." He broke off. "This doesn't make any sense. Whoever hit this place is using a mix of salarian and elcor weapons, but batarian missiles."

Liara nodded. "The station is losing orbital velocity. Another six hours and it will fall within the collapse point of the gas giant's gravity well. Ion signatures fade rapidly. If no one had come by in a day or two, the only evidence would be positron traces."

Shepard leaned back in her chair. "Take scans. Can you tell if the station was boarded?"

Liara and Madel were quiet for almost a full minute. "It does not appear so. It was holed...repeatedly. Any boarding parties would have had to do so in full environmental suits, and significant materials on board would have been lost to space. The docking tubes of the station were blown apart...so were the rows of escape pods, before any could be launched, it appears."

"Fuck. Traynor, any net activity? Can we tap into the comm net on that station, anything?"

Traynor tapped several keys."I don't think so, Major."

Liara shook her own head. "The reactor was destroyed. There is no power. Boarding in search of evidence would be … very dangerous."

Colms rubbed his chin. "Why not send a probe inside? We do have multi-vector thrust probe units."

Shepard shrugged. "Do it. We'll pick up the data on our way out." She tapped her comm. "Joker, best speed to the colony, what would our ETA be?"

Joker's voice came back cool and professional. "Twenty-one minutes, ma'am."

She nodded. "Alright. Pressly, prep a comm beacon with everything we've got and fire it off. Traynor, comm the destroyer escort. I want two of them to follow us in and two to secure the relay. Liara, get suited up and pick one of your tech-nerds to tag along. Weapons, pick out some asteroids on our way in and test your guns."

She stood up. "Pressly, you have the D and C. Message Cole and tell him to have Beta Squad kitted up and in the pinnace bay in five."

Liara swallowed, but tapped Madel on the shoulder. "Acquire an environmental suit and shield unit from the armory and meet us in the pinnace bay with a class one science kit. I will join you shortly."

Shepard walked to her quarters, flinging open her closet and pulling down her armor. "VI, encrypted personal message, Tantalus clearance, to codename "Eliza". Begin message. At Lenal. System wiped. Investigating. Unclear attackers. Advise post haste." She paused.

The VI chimed. "Message ready. Open transmission window is available, transmit?"

She nodded, tugging on the armored undersuit. "Yes."

O-ATTWN-O

Riding in the pinnace was much smoother than decent in a MAKO, especially since it had it's own pilot who didn't ascribe to the piloting methods Shepard used.

Beta Squad – the informal name for the second detachment of her marine force – was sitting quietly. The group was a mix – three N5 marines, all with RRU experience, formed the core of the team. A pair of scout-snipers from the AIS acted as the long arm, and a single DACT was heavy weapons. The team's commander, a scarred female N7 lieutenant named Lee Riley, sat across from Shepard, hands busy with her heavy Eviscerator shotgun. Shepard had served with the woman briefly in her RRU days, but Lee had transferred out before Torfan.

That made talking to her a lot easier, but also made Lee a bit nervous, since she remembered the Shepard of old. She'd been trying to talk Shepard out of coming the entire trip. "Ma'am, we're perfectly capable of handling this without risking you or the Science Officer."

Shepard smirked, putting on her helmet. "I haven't rolled with N's for quiet a while, Lee. I've been piloting a desk for days now, I need some action."

Lee scowled before putting on her own helmet. "You pull that Kyle-crazy shit like you did on Dirth and I'm knocking your ass out and hauling you on the pinnace. You can court martial me later."

Shepard grinned. "Not the same as I used to be. We're going in fast and hard, find evidence, and getting the fuck out. I strongly doubt there's any hostiles down there, but after the shit I've been through the last year, I wouldn't be surprised if we run into undead Protheans." Shepard flexed her shoulders,

Liara muttered. "Or plant zombies." She carefully checked her custom pistol that Shepard had made her before holstering it. Her Colossus armor had been repainted to Alliance spec, and the MCV standard rank hatchings stood out on her shoulder.

Lee's helmeted head shook. "I hope not. Just barely survived the Tenth RIU, thought this gig would be some relaxation."

The pilot spoke over the pinnace intercom. "Coming up on the colony now. GTS batteries... intact. GARDIAN towers,too. Colony tower is … shit, blown to pieces."

Haptic video flickered in the center of the pinnace's seating areas. The terrain was some kind of brownish gray moss, and in the distance sluggish silvery water surged almost sullenly against a shore of dark black sand. Strange pods topped with frond-like leaves were scattered around the edges of a sharply defined square of concrete, the edges of it bordered by neat farm enclosures and hydroponic domes.

The turian colony was a crescent of plascrete buildings around a central tower, with GARDIAN towers at each cardinal point and nine GTS missile banks set into the low hills beyond. The small colony buildings were shattered, some still emitting faint trails of smoke. Bodies littered the ground along with splashes of blue – many of them too small to be adults.

The tower itself, a hulking curved construction, ended abruptly fifty feet from it's base, crowned by melted metal and the occasional straggling construction beam. Fragments of the tower and ugly warped splotches of melted dirt and moss were flung in a cone of blackened destruction a good two hundred feet from the tower, while holes big enough to drive a MAKO through were punched in and through what was left standing.

Shepard's eyes traced over the image. "Liara, do we know how many people lived here?"

The asari's voice was soft. "Three thousand. Mostly civilian families. There was a turian garrison of five hundred, and of course all adults had time in the militia and small arms."

Shepard nodded. "Set us down at the north edge of town outside of the fields. Weapons hot, everyone, and stay frosty."

The pinnace landed smoothly, the back of the craft splitting open and a ramp extending. Shepard took point, moving her hands in long-unused movements as she did so. The N-series marines moved into flanking positions, the snipers moving behind them.

Shepard keyed her comm. "Liara, stick with Mr. Madel and the science gear, and cover our backs. Drop a barrier followed by a shockwave if you get into a pickle and fall back inside the pinnace." She paused, moving her hands in another signal, and the snipers split up, heading for elevated positions. "Lee, take two and circle right. I'll take the DACT and one and circle left. Liara will hold here and scan."

Riley nodded, shipping her shotgun to withdraw an Avenger rifle. "Copy. Pattern Elo-Six, two clicks if hostile, three if fallback."

Shepard nodded, agreeing to common N7 practice of 'clicking' radio comms as a signal. "Copy. Move out."

Their scouting of the ruined colony took a good twenty minutes. Every single turian was dead. The colony defenses had been remotely hacked somehow, then their fire control software wiped and their targeting profiles deleted.

Liara's probes found no clear pattern to weapons used – turian, salarian, batarian, even human. No sign of biotics were found, and the turian garrison unit was found near the base of the tower, literally shot to pieces by heavy weapons similar to what elcor used.

There were no real clues as to the perpetrator. The omnis and computer units they found were wiped – Liara found faint residues of EMP discharges on several empty battery packs, and theorized someone had triggered an EMP device just before or just after the attack.

Shepard visualized it. Some kind of rapid, brutal attack on the orbiting ships, so fast no warning got out. Hacked defenses, and an EMP burst. Higher automation would be frozen, security systems offline, leaving only hand-to-hand and light arms to defend with. Against heavy weapons and some sort of orbital strike on the tower itself, that was suicidal.

Of course, not a single turian showed wounds to their backs. They'd all died fighting, even the older children.

Lee radioed in a few minutes later. "Found something. Not sure what. Get over here."

Shepard and her small unit moved to the location, a low slung building with the size and bulk of a warehouse. Warehouses didn't usually have turrets mounted in the walls, however, nor were they built of heavy duty heavy armor plating underneath the cheap duracrete wall surface.

A single heavy security door once kept the warehouse shut, but that had been masterfully blown down by shaped charges of some kind. Lee and her team were at the entrance, weapons ready.

Shepard moved from cover to join her, senses alert. "Sitrep."

Lee gestured inside."Dead krogan. More than a few. Some kind of lab."

Shepard frowned and stepped inside. The room inside the warehouse was spacious, a mix of an actual warehouse in the front, and oversized partitioned labs in the back. From the size of the doors and furnishings, this was a krogan facility.

_Krogan and turians didn't get along._

_Krogan didn't build fucking labs, either._

She glanced around, coming Liara a moment later. "Liara, get Madel and get to this location. I need you to tell me what the shit I'm looking at here." She walked down one side of the building as she waited. Here and there were dead krogan, wearing splintered armor with black and yellow colors, clutching weapons even in death.

Tall banks of computers, dark and dead. Stacks of weapons and ammo, carefully stockpiled. Several krogan armored vehicles, and a customized gunship, towards the back.

Liara arrived several minutes later, a bit out of breath, and Shepard waved her over, heading for the back. Three rooms with walls of bright steel took up the area, along with instruments on the ceilings and walls she didn't recognize. "What do we have?"

Liara began looking around, her features set in a frown behind her clear faceplate. "These are … genetic sequencing devices. I'm not particularly familiar with this sort of equipment, Doctor Sedanya would probably know more." She paused. "And this is a sub-spectrum particle scanner. I used one when looking at microscopic material surfaces in my digs."

Liara walked into the second lab. "...there is a drain in the floor, Shepard, and this table is similar to the ones we saw on Edolus at Cerberus's facility, although a different design." She pulled open a locker, revealing neatly racked tools. "Scalpels and medical syringes, most likely an autopsy or dissection facility?"

Shepard ran her hands along her ODIN nervously. "It's sized for krogan." She pointed to a chair and desk, both of which came up to her chest. "Krogan don't do science."

Liara was running scans on her omnitool. "There are signs of krogan blood and bone matter adhering to the tables. As there are no corpses in this room, I can only surmise krogan were being … dissected here."

Shepard shook her head, moving into the last lab. This one was even more bewildering, with a complicated paper chart pinned to one wall of the krogan nervous system, with many scrawled notes in korogish marring it's surface. "Make any sense of this? Or the equipment?"

Liara glanced around the room, which was centered around a blocky booth-like device with several small stations around it. "I hesitate to hazard a guess." She paused. "Shepard. There is a blood reading here, on the floor of this room. It was cleaned...but it is salarian blood."

Shepard walked over. There was an ugly grouping of holes in the wall, the metal discolored. "Someone got hit by a shotgun. Close range. Not many salarians would be able to survive that much."

Liara was examining another desk. "There are blank OSD's here, but nothing with data. There is a case for optical chips that shows sign of wear, but nothing is within."

Shepard shuddered. "This reminds me of fucking Eingana. Did you check for spores?"

Liara gave a small laugh. "Yes, I did." She knelt down, frowning, and examined something. "I'm getting some kind of fragmentary power reading..."

Shepard walked over. The desk was not quite flush against the wall. With a shove of muscle and biotics, she moved it aside, and a tiny clank was heard. Ducking down, she reached out and picked up a memory wafer from a manual recorder.

"The fuck?"

Liara gave a nod. "Memory wafers record using solid-state crystal imprints, rather than digitized data. It would not be vulnerable to an EMP burst...nor show up on most scans. The only reason I found it was I was looking for low-emission sources hoping to find any hidden rooms."

Shepard flipped the wafer in her hands. "Can I read it with an omnitool?

Liara shrugged. "You should be able to."

Shepard ran her omni over it,and there was a pause as the onboard computer processed. Then a grainy black and white video image splashed up.

The krogan in the image was unscarred, but his crest was extremely thick – a sign of great age,if Shepard remembered correctly. His voice was cultured and refined, weird for krogan.

"There is little time. The Broker assaults my works, I know not why. If you find this, Ylana, seek my release if you can. Clan Ganar does not break it wor – "

The image cut off, and Shepard sighed. Then she felt a surge of alarm from Liara. "What is it?"

Liara swallowed. "Ylana was the name of my mother's attendant. It was not a usual asari name, it was a namesake of her salarian father. I … assumed she perished with the rest of my mother's Triune..."

Shepard sighed, and glared at the wafer. She tapped her omnitool. "Lee, take pictures of everything, and then signal the pinnace for recovery. Ensign Traynor, contact the Turian Hierarchy immediately, and inform them that their colony has gone dark. And get me a secure channel to Arcturus using highest encryption strength ASAP."

Liara folded her arms. "You think the Shadow Broker destroyed this colony to get at this krogan?"

Shepard shrugged. "I have no clue. I will have to find a way to ask him, I suppose. He was of some help during the struggle with Saren, but that doesn't excuse this kind of fucking slaughter. I need to figure out what to do next."


	6. Chapter 6 : Hubris and Hope

**A/N: **_HA! OWNAGE! OSABC is on TVTropes. Gigantic thanks to a chaotic nine-tailed fox for that. _

_Garrus small pieces, finally finishing off the crazy salarian doctor, and a new Scooby-Doo MYSTARY! (I'm just baiting LDH at this point for lulz).  
_

_Admiral Ahern is my favorite canon NPC in the whole game, I think. The first time he burst out with "Sorry, Shepard, but there's no award for most times shot" I laughed so hard I broke my chair. A lot of people have commented on some of the dumb things Shepard has done. This is my way of a fix. _

_As far as the first part goes, it's preshadowing for a thing down the line._

_I had a PM asking me "Why Tali / Joker". I want you to think for a minute how fucked up a human being has to get in order for him to decide his best chance at finding love is with a computer. Then stick on top the relationship is more like mother/son than anything else. It goes beyond creepy into 'wtf am I seeing' territory, and it's goddamned terrifying as to what it implies about Joker's state of mind by ME3. _

_It looks like Progman beat me in update speed, but we'll see who wins the war on "most spectacular destruction of a Tupari machine" in the end.  
_

_Confused about the SA government in my AU? Try reading my "__**Systems Alliance Order of Battle**__" __or "__**The Cerberus Files : Humans**__"__. _

* * *

"_The fact that you are here, in this training, tells me that you're likely a pathetic piece of varren shit who should be thankful they weren't shot at birth, or a rear-echelon motherfucker with more rank than brains and the mental capacity of a retarded vorcha. Either way, I've forgotten more about war than you'll ever know. So pay fucking attention!" _

– _Admiral Tradius Ahern, addressing the N7 cadre of 2182_

* * *

Garrus Vakarian settled down in his chair with a great deal of satisfaction, his spurs flexing with repressed glee. He'd finally done it.

Saleon was arrested, charged with nine hundred eleven counts of the murder of a sentient and six hundred plus counts of violations of the Citadel Rights and Security act. The salarian government wanted him to execute, and several others wanted a piece as well.

He'd enjoyed the walk through C-SEC, hearing the cheers and catcalls of his fellow detectives and officers, while he pushed the slightly battered form of Dr. Heart, better known as Doctor Saleon in front of him to a nearby jail cell. The hunt for the bastard had been satisfying and quick, ending with a battle aboard the doctor's medical frigate, the MSV Fedale, which was full of victims and strange medical technology. Telanya and Forlan had disabled the pitiful mercenary forces the salarian had assembled while Garrus took out the ship's engines, hacked it's internal defenses, and finally punched the sick doctor unconscious.

That had been the best part of the whole thing, actually. He chuckled as he added vithin spice to his morning kaffar, stirring it absently as he remembered.

He'd also been able to rescue over a hundred very ill, very damaged organ farm victims, most of which would manage to recover. Two of them had been very important members of the Palavenus clan, another was the bondmate of the daughter of Matriarch T'Rome. Garrus had been feted as the C-SEC hero of the day, made only better when he got to see Palin's gobsmacked expression as seeing the doctor brought in alive.

Palin's voice had been grudgingly full of respect. "Perhaps running all over space and having your fringe blown off a few times with that barbarian Shepard taught you a few things after all, Vakarian. Very well done. Your father will be proud of you."

Of course, some of the things he'd seen on the Fedele were deeply disturbing. There had been a pod of Thorian plant zombies on board, as well as several dead asari wearing the robes of the Triune Unity. Saleon had refused to explain why they were there, and Forlan was busy across the office even now, working on breaking the surprisingly difficult encryption of the doctor's OSD's and logs.

Also troubling was the strange black marks he'd found on some of the donor slaves on the ship. The C-SEC medics who had come aboard the Fedele to aid moving the wounded had said the marks looked similar to certain batarian slave brands. Those brands were usually merely markers of ownership, but these had been done on some twisted genetic level. The medics were baffled, but the first thing that hit Garrus when he saw them was the similarity they had to the bizarre shapes and characters he'd seen on Virmire, on the plinth where Nazara had shown itself to them.

It worried Garrus immensely. Saleon was sick enough to have his talons in lots of bad things, but how - and where - had he gotten a hold of thorian creatures or some of Benezia's asari? What were those marks, and why did they look like Reaper script? The worst part was the thorian zombies in question were salarians, which made Garrus worry there was a third giant brain-eating plant out there somewhere.

He sipped his kaffar quietly, and was just about to start on writing his reports when his omni-tool chimed. "Detective Vakarian, your presence is requested immediately in Medical Investigation Room Six."

Forlan glanced up as he stood. "Issues?"

Garrus shrugged. "Don't know yet. Keep working on that, and if Tel shows up tell her I'm in Med Six." He exited his offices, smoothing down the few wrinkles in his C-SEC uniform as he hustled up the stairs to detention and booking.

Medical Six was one of eight medical pre-processing rooms used by C-SEC in the process of arrest and incarceration. Checks for disease, cyberware, biotics and the like had already been done upon arrival, but more serious medical conditions could also arise. Garrus figured Saleon might have some kind of suicide pill or something up his fringe, but the techs had already checked that.

He arrived, heading down a corridor. He passed Medical Two and saw a sour-looking Saleon being checked by two turians, so that wasn't the issue. Upon reaching room six, he found Executor Palin and two dour looking Spectres, along with the surprising presence of the asari Jiong had rescued on Virmire, Rana Thanoptis.

Garrus slowed upon entering the room, glancing around. "Reporting, Executor."

Palin nodded,and one of the turian Spectre's stepped outside, sealing the door after him. "We have some issues, Garrus, with some of the victims you found. Perhaps Dr. Thanoptis can explain, since I am still reeling from being briefed."

Rana gave Garrus a slightly nervous look. "As you know, I was forced to work with Saren's people on indoctrination. I was turned over to the Council, who have been using my expertise to try and identify indoctrinated victims and continue my work on finding a way to resist or reverse it." She gestured to the body of the turian on the examination table. "Examinations on this person - one Vunath Ikor, a colonist from the Lenal system - tripped certain flags C-SEC installed after my advice. This person is - well, was - indoctrinated."

The turian Spectre behind her folded his arms, his stance pure Deathwatch. "Talath Talid, Office of Special Tactics and Recon. We originally set flags looking for certain kind of brain lesions to identify potential infiltrators. Wasn't expecting to find corpses with the same markers. This is concerning to us because the Hierarchy reported yesterday that they'd lost contact with the colony at Lenal. A Systems Alliance task-force under the command of your old CO, Shepard, jumped in system for some kind of shakedown run and reported the entire system wiped."

Garrus winced. "And now..."

Palin sighed. "Very few people are being informed about these ... Reapers. Fewer still are given additional details regarding indoctrination. It would cause a panic, spirits-be-damned hunts, and chaos. As a result, investigations into Reaper-related activity - or possible tangents - will have to be handled through Special Response - specifically, you and Detective Telanya, since you both already know more about this tark-shit than I do."

He glanced back at the Spectre, who nodded. "For the duration of the emergency - which will end when the Council says it is over - you will be at the disposal of the Spectres to review, investigate and report on these issues. We are not policemen and have few of our number trained in forensic analysis, and none of us have gotten up close and personal like you have."

Palin flicked a mandible. "I know you just got back, but you and Telanya will be headed out again, to cover the site and figure out what you can. Saleon is going into Spectre custody - his brain shows a few of the same lesions, so he's had at least periphial contact at some point."

Rana spoke. "The salarian brain is much more vulnerable to indoctrination than turians, Executor. He may be ... dangerous. To himself and to others."

Palin snorted. "Nothing some nervestim jamming won't fix. For you, Detective, I need you to kit up for a field excursion. Armory is open, take whatever the hell you need. You and Telanya have three days before the Hierarchy plans to torch the site and call it a pirate raid,so make your investigation quick but thorough."

Spectre Talid nodded. "You will be reporting to the Council upon conclusion. We have a vessel standing by. You have two hours to get ready and meet us at Docking Slip 144, Central Dock Ring just outside Bachrjet Ward."

Garrus gave a deep exhalation and nodded. "What about Forlan, sir?"

Palin shrugged. "He can keep working to crack Saleon's notes. We've already forwarded copies to the STG and the human AIS, but no returns yet." He glanced at Rana and the Spectre. "If that's all, I need a moment with my detective in private. We'll be in the next med room over."

He nodded to Vakarian and exited, and Garrus followed, trailing him into the next medroom, which was empty. Palin shut the door behind him.

Garrus knew that expression, he'd seen it on Palin's face whenever someone gave him orders he didn't like. The turian executor was still shaken and not his old self after his near-death at the Citadel Tower, and Garrus figured it wouldn't hurt to be nice for once. "Executor, is everything alright?"

Palin flicked both mandibles in a weak smile. "No, it isn't." He sat down heavily on the examination table. "I suspect the Spectres will be using this to see if you are good material to join their ranks. It's the kind of thing they do. You were close to almost the entire operation Shepard ran, and she's going to be tied up in the human military for a good while."

Garrus nodded. "Will she be in-system when we arrive?"

Palin shook his head. "No. That's ... not what I wanted to talk about, really." He gave Garrus a hard look. "I know you. You're brave, hardheaded, and blunt. You respect only those leaders and traditions you agree with, and your sense of sublimating yourself for the best needs of the Hierarchy is still somewhat lacking."

He held up a hand to forestall any protest. "I'm just saying the truth. You already proved you can follow the rules when you have to. But I want you to watch yourself and Telanya carefully with these damned Spectres. Whatever is going on, we're not being given all the facts, and the thing that kills cops faster than gangs or ambushes is going into dangerous situations without all the information."

Garrus frowned. "You think the Spectres are hiding something?"

Palin nodded. "Yes. I think they - or the Hierarchy - knows something. Keep an open mind when you investigate this colony and remember your report is now going to affect galactic policy, not just generate paperwork and cause me headaches."

Garrus nodded. "As I told Shepard ... maybe a bit more red tape would have prevented Saren from become a traitor to us all."

Palin snorted. "Doubtful. He was a sociopathic lunatic twenty years ago and more. These others aren't much better. Be careful."

Garrus nodded again. "I'll be cautious, and so will Telanya. We didn't survive the last year to get taken out now."

Palin nodded, and handed him an OSD. "This is all the various arrests and interactions we've had where the culprit is, or was suspected of being, indoctrinated. Might help you find a pattern in this mess." He paused and then gave Garrus a turian salute. "Remember, safe. As irritating as you are, training a replacement or listening to Forlan bitching is too much trouble right now.'

Garrus grinned as he left. It wasn't as good as serving with Shepard, but it would give him an excuse to shoot her a message. And Tali, too, he missed needling her.

Telanya might be a bit angry about the sudden departure, but once he mentioned the Reapers she would understand.

He hoped. He didn't need to be lifted biotically again any time soon.

O-ATTWN-O

A word had entered President Windsor's mind at some point during the day, between listening to delegates from Section Five argue for additional funds for soil reclamation in an area where the water table was so irradiated that the replacing the soil would simply leave it irradiated in a month, and the meeting with Ira Bekenstein where the man wanted to actually use Citadel-earmarked funds to start a campaign against 'alien influence'.

Amusingly enough, the word, a hold-over from the internet slang of yesteryear, was 'derp'. It was a perfect description of the idiots agenda he'd been subjected to for most of the day. He'd found himself struggling not to violate his image as a dignified leader of society by simply uttering it repeatedly and storming out of the endless stupidity of a political nature that passed as policy discussion, instead somehow finding the strength of will to endure.

When he got done, he'd literally fled for his office, and had told his bodyguards to kill anyone trying to get in other than his niece. The smirks they'd tried to hide as he left them outside had only made him decide they could sit with him on the next Senate meeting and suffer alongside him rather than stand outside and flirt with passing secretaries.

Speaking of secretaries, there was only so much pointless, self-referential political masturbation and incompetently arrogant presumption he could take in one day, and he was going to have pointed words with his press secretary regarding who and when certain figures were allowed access to his schedule.

He'd cleared his calender of all other appointments, letting them instead deal with Vice President Huerta. The man never did come back quiet right from his near-death experience, and the subtly creepy vibes he gave off usually shut down even the most persistent of lobbyists and 'figures of importance.'

"Recall to me why, again, I decided to take up this particular job, instead of something less stressful and less futile, such as krogan anger councilor? And why was I stupid enough to chose to do so twice?"

Sitting across the room in the Pentagonal Office, his favorite niece only gave him a pleasant smile. "You did so because the other potential candidates were unsuited and bigoted tools of the corporations, Uncle." She adjusted her posture in the chair, and brought out a datapad. "Sadly, I fear I have more complications."

James Windsor sighed, tapping the elegant brass panel on his desk that contained a tasteful haptic panel. "Linda, we will be occupied for the balance of the afternoon. Please inform the Speaker we are currently involved in delicate negotiations, but that we will be available at his leisure tomorrow afternoon."

He clicked off, rubbing his temples with two fingers. "I can only presume there has been a difficulty with Major Shepard's mission. Trouble follows her around like idiocy seems attracted to me."

Elizabeth smoothed her expression free of any humor at her uncle's predicament and merely nodded. "Yes, Uncle. She proceeded to Watson with no difficulty. Upon arriving in the Lenal system, however, they discovered the He3 station destroyed, the colony slaughtered, and dead krogan in a biological research lab designed for krogan use."

Windsor brought up a screen on the wall, reviewing images of the wrecked colony. "A pirate raid?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "Shepard's team found signs of multiple weapon types, not typically found in the hands of pirates. Additionally, although all other media at the colony was wiped, they found a single memory wafer with fragmentary data indicating the Shadow Broker was behind the strike. From the context and the lack of a body matching the krogan on the wafer, Shepard believes the krogan was taken by the Broker."

Windsor frowned. "It still makes very little logical sense for the Broker to kill an entire colony, just to get at one krogan."

Elizabeth sighed. "It does, given what else Shepard found. The turian dead were given a quick autopsy to attempt to confirm the weapons used were not pirate models. The examination showed several dozen of them with augmented cyberware similar to that we found in Saren, as well as cerebral lesions associated with the research we recovered on Reaper indoctrination."

Elizabeth pulled up a screen on her datapad and forwarded it to the wall. "I had the AIS FINCIN group look over these transactions, financial moves done in accounts connected to this colony. There was a large transfer of money authorized by one Ganar Okeer a few days ago. This Okeer is likely the krogan Shepard says made the recording she found."

Windsor shook his head. "The name does not mean anything to me."

Elizabeth nodded. "It did not ring any bells with me either, Uncle, but Shepard recognized it. Clan Ganar was involved with Saren, and according to her, it's leader, this Okeer, was likely involved in some way with the krogan-rachni crossbreeds that caused so many casualties on the Citadel. C-SEC has confirmed the krogan mercenaries that caused trouble on the Citadel prior to Benezia's arrival were known associates or members of Clan Ganar as well."

The President rubbed his chin. "The CDEM is doing a remarkably shoddy job of watching the krogan if lunatics of this sort can go traipsing over space in such a bold fashion. Why haven't Citadel authorities arrested this Okeer or his confederates?"

She shut off her pad. "Bribes, I suspect. That, and Okeer tends to operate out of the Terminus Systems. We are not sure if the Shadow Broker's assault was tasked with simply kidnapping Okeer, or killing two birds with one stone and taking out a colony of indoctrinated turians. My own concern is the fact that an Ashland-Eldfell HE3 mining facility with forty seven humans on board was also destroyed with no survivors."

Windsor grimaced. "Covering his tracks, no doubt. It is a provocation that I will not ignore, although I fear I am hardly conversant on the actions the Broker takes. That is more something to discuss with Prince Aloxius – who I do not wish aware of my current plans for Shepard." He steepled his fingers in thought for long seconds. "What is Shepard doing now?"

"Holding position and awaiting the turian authorities."

He cursed, tapping his panel again. "Linda, send a message to the Minister of State, letting him know that we desire his advice and conversation as soon as possible. And that this is not in regards to our conversation earlier today." He clicked off. "The Hierarchy will undoubtedly be unamused. For the Broker to act so openly and with such violence indicates we stumbled across something we were not meant to see."

Elizabeth nodded. "That is the conclusion Shepard reached – if they'd arrived a day later, the scene would have looked almost exactly like a pirate attack. There would have been some awkward questions regarding the krogan found on planet, but that would just send any investigators onto wild tangents."

She paused. "Uncle, you had me update Shepard's orders to perform weapons testing in the Lenal system without telling me why. They could have done the tests in Watson. You spoke of Cerberus activity in or near Lenal … but what source did you have?"

Windsor gave his niece a hard look before glancing away. "I received a communication from an unknown source. Whoever it was knew my own plans for Shepard, which I'd only discussed with you, my wife, and the Fleet Master in full. The source knew exactly when the Kazan would be ready, and suggested having Shepard check out Lenal, because there was something hidden there that Cerberus knew of, but that it had to be done in a narrow window of time."

Elizabeth frowned. "And you acted on it? Risked Shepard on unknown intelligence? That is … very unlike you, Uncle."

Windsor sighed. "My best techs couldn't even tell me how the message got routed. It literally appeared in my personal comm queue. No routing. No source. Nothing but a cryptic message. Anyone who can penetrate our systems that fully is extremely dangerous. And possibly very useful."

He smiled. "I cannot fully trust the AIS, and I would rather go to the batarians for aid than trust Prince Aloxius for a heartbeat. The manner in which Cerberus collapsed, and the AIS investigation of what Shepard found, seems to highlight the possibility that the source was a disaffected Cerberus survivor who was attempting to be .. helpful."

Elizabeth gave this several seconds of thought. "But who?"

Windsor gave a flickering smile. "It was kept very quiet, but we learned some time ago that the leader of Cerberus, the Illusive Man, faked his own suicide and is alive. It was he who pointed Shepard in the direction of Noveria. And I believe it was he who sent me this … tidbit."

He stood, turning to stare out the heavy armaglass windows of the Pentagonal Office over Champions Park and the Tomb of Victor Manswell. "I cannot refuse aid – even that of a criminal such as this Illusive Man – when I am trapped by the bars of both law and tradition, Eliza. I do not trust him. But twice he has provided information that has lead to us discovering more about the situation than we knew."

Elizabeth shrugged. "If it is him. And what do we learn from this, aside from the fact that there may be more indoctrinated forces out there?"

Windsor sighed. "That the Shadow Broker is interested in whatever Okeer was working on and is willing to risk hostilities with both the Systems Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy to get it. Given that Okeer was tied up with Saren, that is a fell concept. If I distrust the Illusive Man, that goes double for the Shadow Broker, notwithstanding his assistance in the hunt for Saren or that of his soldiers on the Citadel."

Elizabeth shrugged. "What should we have Shepard do?"

Windsor was silent before shaking his head. "She is ill equipped to handle this sort of problem, and frankly I need her trained as quickly as possible. Have her go ahead and depart for Pinnacle Station immediately. I'm sure she would appreciate time to get her bearings, not to mention find housing, but time is of the essence. Inform Admiral Ahern she will be incoming shortly."

She nodded, even as his check chimed. "I'm very sorry to disturb you, Your Majesty, but I have an incoming priority communication from the Turian Hierarchy – Primarch Fedorian. He has already spoken with Minister Bekenstein and is , ah, upset?"

Windsor sighed. "We will handle the Primarch, Linda. Transfer him to signal line two, please." He glanced up at Eliza. "I despise my job at times."

His niece only laughed as she rose to leave. "And you have another term to go, Uncle!"

O-ATTWN-O

Shepard found that eating in the ship's wardroom with her officers was an interesting experience, especially since they had real food and not recycled protein slop purporting itself as Salisbury steak.

The wardroom was a small eating area roughly the size of the eating area on the Normandy, but designed only for the officers. Liara sat to her right, Pressly to her left, and the rest were arranged by rank, leaving Ensign Traynor at the far end.

The food was actually pretty good, although Shepard admitted to herself that she was hardly a food connisieur. Tali, of course, made due with some kind of dextro-compatible ground shake in a heavy bottle she consumed through a straw, but seemed pleased with it's taste. She had to give the chef extra praise for thinking of the quarian.

Conversation had fallen silent after rather short discussion about differences in seafood in asari and human cuisine. Colms was the first person to break the silence, his voice cool and precise despite the slight slurring of vowels from his Arcturus accent. "Given our discoveries in Lenal, Major, what can we expect to happen next?"

Shepard chewed her food and swallowed before speaking. "We just got our updated orders, and as soon as the shift changes, we're punching out for Pinnacle Station for command training. There's an AIS cruiser on it's way in with some C-SEC investigators to go over this mess."

Assistant Engineer Casey Patrick gave an indelicate snort. "Translation, it's a class-A clusterfuck an' we'd best be about elsewhere, seen?"

She smiled. "Pretty much, Mr. Patrick." She turned back to Colms. "The weapons test was completed satisfactorily?"

The man nodded, his narrow features set in thoughtful lines. "Very much so, Major. A single torpedo vaporized an asteroid some three miles in diameter with little more than gravel-sized fragments left behind, almost twenty percent of the asteroid completely vaporized. Impact analysis modeling shows if my torpedo design hits a turian dreadnaught, we can expect a near kill if we can hit the core section or the engines." He paused. "I still have not had a chance to model Silaris armor or salarian reactive shielding, of course."

Doctor Sedanya picked at her food. "Surely such weapons won't need to be used against our allies, Mr. Colms? After all, the SA was recently admitted to the Council."

Colms fixed her with a cool look. "I doubt such hostilities will break out, but it will always be better to be safe than to be sorry, Doctor. Pirates have shown great abilities in obtaining mil-spec armor and defensive systems, and the criminals of the Terminus under Omega have several vessels boasting Silaris armor. We cannot assume that we will never encounter high-end defenses in our own tasking, after all."

The doctor gave a nod, with a hand movement of siari unity. "Of course, Mr. Colms. I suppose it is much the same as with high-end neurotoxic cancer treatments, those are often tested on krogan and vorcha, the most resistant factors."

Shepard shot Liara a look, and the asari just smirked. Colms and Sedanya's intellectual sniping at one another had gone on earlier when it came to the properties of fish, and was continuing now. Before it escalated further, Shepard spoke up. "I'm just glad the things worked the way they should. Any other problems with the shakedown?"

Traynor, Tali, and Liara shook their head, while Colms merely returned to his food after a muttered 'no'. Doctor Sedanya spoke quietly. "No, Major, the medbay is very well equipped. Your supply officer did a masterful job of making sure we were actually overstocked on everything we needed."

Cole, at the end of the table next to Traynor, nodded. "I'll second that. I mean, it's still the standard SA crap, but we have extra medpacks, grenades, and tons of mods. Plus enough spares and backups that we don't have to scrimp when it comes to a fight. The boys in Alpha and Charlie are a bit jealous of all the fancy guns Beta has, though."

Dallas gave a small grin. "Don't worry about that too much. I have my ways, and I will make sure you guys are ready for whatever comes."

Shepard gave an approving nod to this before turning to Pressly. "Who has the deck right now?"

Pressly swallowed his food. "Navigator Jackson. She needs the experience, she's even more hesitant than Friggs was. I'm not too worried, Joker's still on watch."

Shepard smirked. "That worries me more, actually." She ate the last bite of steak before pushing her plate away. "Alright, boys and girls. Tomorrow is a big day, we dock at Pinnacle and start getting the Kazan and Battle Group Chiron together. I've drawn up a drill schedule for all watch sections. I'm setting open leave and they can use shuttles to head down to Inter'sai on the weekends, but the rest of the time I want them training and drilling."

She turned to Pressly. "It's likely that I will be tied up a lot. So will Liara and Tali, since they haven't had formal SA training and supposedly Ahern will be handling that too. You'll have to keep tabs on a lot of moving parts while we're docked."

Pressly shrugged. "No problem, ma'am. I'll look over the watch schedule and make sure the NCO's and division seconds keep things running smoothly."

She nodded, glancing down the table. "Mr. Patrick, Ms. Scott , you will have to keep an eye on engineering and science, respectively. You come very highly recommended, Mr. Patrick. The Chief of NavEng said the only reason you weren't promoted to Lieutenant Commander and made Chief was due to my meddling getting Tali the job. I didn't intend to cut you off, so as long as we make a good showing when it comes time for final inspect, I'll chalk that up to you and recommend you get your promotion at the very least."

The man actually looked embarrassed. "Veina, that'd be a touch o' class, Major. I canna say it'd be all on me own shoulders, yonder lass is hardly the sort of idjit NavEng has been throwing my direction ta train the past few years. But ye won't have a squeak of trouble out of the Engineering department, or ye'll need to find some new crew as I throw 'em out the airlock."

She snorted. "Just what I wanted to hear, Mr. Patrick." She turned to Colms. "As for you, Mr. Colms, I think a careful review of what options Pinnacle's docks will offer for our battlegroups destroyers and frigates should be under your purview. The destroyers are scrap and the frigates are crap. Determine how to best outfit them and submit it to me, from what I've been told BuShips will sign off on it gladly."

Colms narrowed his eyes. "Do we have an operation budget for this … refit?"

She smirked. "If someone suggests we do, feel free to inform them they can argue about it with me."

He said nothing for a moment before a flicker of a smile crossed his features. "Well, that is one method for removing idiots from the gene pool, I suppose. I will have my recommendations drawn up as soon as I can review the ships in person."

Liara finished her food and glanced at Shepard. "You said Tali and I are going to be .. training with you?"

Shepard shrugged. "I'm afraid I wasn't given a lot of details. I know Admiral Ahern by … reputation only."

Cole nodded. "Hell, who doesn't? He was in charge of the most dangerous combat team in history. Uh, no offense to your own team, Shepard."

Shepard snorted. "He had Major Kyle on his team, along with Admiral Chu, the woman who trained me, Rachel Florez, and the most lethal sniper in history, Michael Saracino. They could have mopped the floor with Neutron, or with the guys I took down Saren with."

Sedanya frowned. "Saracino...isn't that the name of that .. thug in charge of Terra Firma?"

Shepard nodded. "Yeah, his son, I think. Michael Saracino at least had good reasons to hate turians, given the ugly nature of the First Contact War. His kid is just walking shit in a suit."

Casey snorted. "An jus how is that different from most of tha rest, selah? The lot of them are like a bag full of shite."

Shepard shook her head. "I don't know. The President was very much … far more than I expected."

Casey swigged water. "Bah. He's a prince o'the blood, not some money-snuffling wretch with his 'ead up his arse."

Sedanya glanced over at Jiong. "The Commissariat has no issues with the low opinion your men have of the government?"

Jiong wiped his mouth before giving her a narrow smile."Generally speaking, the Commissariat does not punish those who merely speak blatant truth. I fear I must agree with the … colorful … opinion of Mr. Patrick – Michael Saracino can, perhaps, be forgiven his racism, but Charles Saracino is disgraceful."

Shepard smirked again. "I think that's it for the night, folks. I'm done. Liara, I need to see you in my stateroom for a few minutes about some of the sensor upgrades I want done at Pinnacle." She rose from the table, and departed.

By the time she'd headed to her quarters, brushed her teeth, and crossed the hall to the stateroom, Liara was already waiting. "Are you ready for tomorrow, Sara?"

Shepard smirked. "Not yet. But I managed to make sure my quarters are sound isolated, so you can help me get ready."

Liara gave her a look of mixed worry and … arousal? Shepard felt a lot of things burst across the bond at that moment. "I … we must be very careful until we announce our plans, Sara..."

Shepard nodded. "I know. But I tested it earlier, I was screaming at the top of my lungs and Dallas couldn't even hear me right out side the door."

Liara laughed, and then pulled Shepard over to her, kissing her lips gently. "In that case..."

O-ATTWN-O

Arriving at Pinnacle station early in the morning, Shepard flexed her back to work the kinks out. Liara's cool presence sleeping alongside her for four hours had been more reassuring and refreshing than eight hours of sleep without her.

The activities beforehand also cleared Shepard's head of distractions.

Now freshly showered (and bandaged) and dressed in full dress whites, she stood on the bridge as the Kazan finished docking with the bulk of Pinnacle Station, in high orbit over the garden world of Inter'sai.

The station was a typical class two construction – a long tube pierced with broad bands of windows, with spars on either side to facilitate docking and a sphere shape at one end with more windows. Heavy weapons and GARDIAN trails shadowed it's center, while arrays of space defenses floated in a serene ring around the planet itself.

The board showed a clear docking connection, and Shepard tapped the 1MC. "All hands, we are now docked. This is a training assignment, so the drill and GMT rotation will be quite heavy, but liberty is set for the ship at 1800 each day, ending at 0600 in the morning. On the weekends, we'll go to two-section watches so you guys can take liberty on Inter'sai itself."

She paused. "This is going to be hard training for everyone, including me. I expect each and everyone of you to push yourself and take advantage of this. Not very many ships, much less entire battlegroups, get refitted and trained here. Use this time to improve yourself and make me proud, Kazan."

"VI, log the time – Major-Commander Shepard is going ashore. Commander Pressly has nominal command, authorization by me."

She clicked off, turning to see Tali standing next to Liara. "Alright, gang. I'm supposed to report directly to Admiral Ahern, and for some reason he said he wanted you two to tag along. He already sounds like an asshole, and I've only spoken with him for five seconds. Let's get this over with quickly."

Liara and Tali nodded, and Shepard took the elevator down with them to deck four, stepping off to enter the boarding tube. At the far end of the airlock connecting her ship to the station was a massive security door, which hissed open with equalizing pressure.

A pair of SA Marines, uniforms perfect, stood at parade rest in the boarding tunnel to the station. They snapped to attention as one when Shepard approached. "Major-Commander, ma'am! The Admiral of the Station presents his complements and requests you join him with your entourage on deck sixteen, his offices."

She returned the salute. "At ease. Thank you, Sergeant. As we are unfamiliar with the station, I would be pleased if you lead the way."

"Of course, Major. Please follow me." The leftmost figure swiveled on his heel in a perfect about face and lead them down the docking tube into the station proper.

Pinnacle Station's central tube was lined with ugly, narrow buildings inside, connected with mag-lift walkways and a handful of air-cars. The sergeant lead them to one such aircar, a plain black model of human instead of asari design, and took the drivers seat.

Accelerating away from the docking area, Shepard looked out. The tube was at least a half-mile across, buildings built into the side of the tube. Heavy machinery lines, omnifoundries and open docks devoted to refitting ships dominated nearly half the tube, while large plazas covered with hundreds of drilling marines took up most of the rest.

The aircar entered a hexagonal tunnel set into the far wall of the tube, speeding along a traffic lane with but a few other cars in it. "This is the connector between the manufactory, refit, and marine training areas to the habitation core of the base, ma'am."

She nodded absently. Liara glanced over. "Is the spherical section set up like Arcturus Station, then?"

The marine laughed. "I am afraid not, ma'am. More like the Lower Wards of the Citadel." The aircar emerged and Shepard saw what he meant.

The sphere was mostly covered in five to six story towers, apartments and crammed together re-purposed arcology kits. In some places, actual colony module stacks had been hard-welded to the hull in piles a hundred feet tall, linked by mass-effect driven elevators. A fourth of the sphere jutted inwards, long dark lines of windows covering it's surface, the only entrance a massive fortified gate with heavy kinetic shielding and thick metallic barriers. Turrets tracked them as they set down in a courtyard painted with the Alliance 'A' and the aircar split open, disgorging them.

"This is Pinnacle Command, ma'am. The front desk will provide additional directions." Shepard nodded to the marine and headed off, glancing around. The landing pad was flanked by several courtyards, all of which were filled with white-shirted drill instructors barking abuse and instruction down on human recruits.

Tali looked around then folded her hands behind her back as she followed. "What is this place?"

Shepard smiled. "When a marine gets enough experience to move up in the ranks and serve time in the space side forces, they have to complete special training – zero-g combat, understanding alien races, mixed terrain training, stuff like that. Pinnacle is one of the places they get trained at. Officers come here for training as well – combat, tactics, political training, other stuff too."

She reached the heavy entry portal. Above the frosted glass doors was a mosaic made of shattered pieces of Marine armor, some bloodied and some merely tinted, spelling out a grim message.

"The more you bleed in peace, the less like you are to bleed to death in war."

Liara eyed the message and then coughed. "Well, that is certainly … encouraging?"

Shepard opened the doors, stepping inside. The lobby beyond was the harshest sort of military décor – absolutely pure white walls framed with blue trim, the SA logo defecated over every possible surface as if it were a deranged shrine. Thin blue carpet, worn in a few places, flanked by black steel decking and a pair of grim portraits against the far wall – Victor Manswell and Jon Grissom.

A broad metal desk, it's center twisted into a sphere bearing the SA logo, was manned by a pair of young-looking female ensigns, who both looked up as Shepard, Liara,and Tali entered.

"Welcome to Pinnacle Training Command, Major-Commander. The Admiral is waiting for you, the elevators will take you to floor sixteen." She handed each of them a thin plastic badge. "Please clip these to your uniform – we require positive location tracking on personnel within the building at all times." She paused. "The admiral can be a bit … intense. Just so you know."

Shepard clipped it on with a sigh, and headed for the elevator. The trip up was done in silence – Shepard, lost in though; Liara worried about if she was going to be a distraction or hindrance to Shepard; Tali, unsure if she was going to be training in how to fight or being an engineer or something else entirely.

The elevator let them out onto a short and narrow hallway, leading to a single pair of double doors in metal. The nameplate next to them read "ADM TRADIUS AHERN, CO PINTRNCOM"

Shepard exhaled and pushed the doors open, stepping beyond, followed by Tali and Liara.

The office they entered had a spartan feel to it. A section was elevated towards the back right corner, a desk and several haptic screens flanking a portal looking out over the base. The other corner contained a tall series of shelves filled with the sort of detritus officers picked up in a long career – commendations, shadow boxes full of medals, a turian claw knife, a slightly bent asari warp sword.

The lower section of the office was wide, flanked by two sectional couches and dominated by the man standing in the middle of it. He was of indeterminate age – his features were tight and cold. A hard, sharp jaw and a thin mouth set off his narrowed blue eyes. A few wrinkles and a long scar marred his features, his red-blond hair cut in a perfect marine high-and-tight, a few strands of gray along the edge near the temples.

His body was clearly hard and defined, thick pectorals and rippling biceps visible even under the thick leather and cloth of his dress blues. His uniform was set off by the two red ribbons around his neck, the giant block of decorations down his left chest, and the small black seashell proudly mounted to his belt buckle. Liara gasped at the last, and Shepard recognized it as well – the Black Remembrance, the highest award the Asari Republic could give. Easily a match for the two Stars of Terra around the man's neck.

The man glanced at all three of them before speaking. "Major-Commander Shepard. I am Admiral of the Red Tradius Ahern, commander of Pinnacle Training Command and Pinnacle Station. This station is designed as the finishing course for all command officers. I have personally trained nineteen admirals, eleven generals, forty eight captains and sixty seven majors. Out of the one hundred and forty something N7 graduates we have in our military, ninety eight of them were trained by me. Pinnacle Station is devoted to taking the best aspects of human, asari, turian, salarian and even batarian military methods and producing the next generation of excellence."

She nodded. "Yes, sir. I'm glad to be here."

He glared. "You won't be for long, and yet you will be once I'm done with you. You have been forwarded here for me to fix whatever the damn hell is wrong with you and slap your crews into something at least resembling a SA task force rather than a shambolic fuckup of proportions rivaling a vorcha placed in charge of operating a nursery. You have issues, Shepard, but I'll fix those."

His eyes flicked over Liara and Tali. "You two. Lieutenant Commander Liara T'Soni and Lieutenant Commander Tali'Zorah nar Normandy, or I suppose nar Kazan now. You are here because neither of you know the first fucking thing about proper soldiering and yet you are now senior officers aboard a SA cruiser. Since I seem to have offended someone by pointing out that a pair of civilian teenagers is hardly fit to serve as such, I get to train you two as well."

Shepard grimaced. "With all due respect, Admiral – "

He held up a hand. "Whenever I hear that goddamned phrase I want to find the person who first thought it was 'respectful' and introduce my knee to his face. We both know it really means 'stick it up your ass sir', so let's be direct, shall we? I hate bullshit and so do you, and I really don't have the time for it. I don't give a fuck if you killed Saren and Benezia, or if these two helped. The only goddamned reason any of your team survived this entire nightmare of an operation is that clearly Saren and Benezia were too busy laughing their asses off to take you seriously."

He stepped closer. "I've read the reports, Shepard. You nearly got your ass handed to you on Noveria because you didn't wear a fucking helmet. What kind of GODDAMNED MORON fights the most dangerous Spectre in space with no fucking helmet!?"

She actually found herself stepping back. "I – "

"You will shut the fuck up as I pin your goddamned ears back so maybe common sense will penetrate your thick skull, Shepard. You nearly got taken out rescuing Doctor I'm-too-pretty-to-wear-real-armor here on Therum because you let yourself goof off at the end of the rescue. You nearly bought it again on Feros because you were idiotic enough to challenge a Spectre AND a matriarch war priestess at the same fucking time as you were surrounded by plant zombies. You could have died on Eingana, where you _knew _even a single breach of your armor would leave you or whoever else got wounded fucked."

He sighed in disgust. "I won't even mention the stupidity you pulled in that last fight with Benezia. Talking shit instead of just shooting Benezia in the head? Not being aware of your target and getting stabbed like a clown?"

Turning back to Liara and Tali, his expression was less angry. "At least you two have the excuse of not being a highly trained N7 soldier, but frankly, you both suck. If it was up to me you two would be spending the next six weeks in basic, but it isn't, so you get to suffer along side Shepard."

He gestured to the couch. "Now, sit your asses down."

Shepard was working hard not to explode at this asshole, stomping over to the couch. She'd bled and suffered after being betrayed over and over again by the SA. She'd proven herself a dozen times over, in training, in making it through the N7 program,in carrying out her duty as a Spectre. Liara had bled and risked her life more than once, Tali had nearly died twice.

Liara carefully placed a hand on Shepard's arm. "Shepard...he may be using rather … crude and insulting language, but I do not think we would have been sent here unless someone thought he could help us all improve. Being angry with him will not help."

Ahern folded his arms and stood in front of them, matching Shepard's glare with his own. "Hell, she can get angry all she wants to, girl. I've survived shit that would make you faint just to read about it. I went up against two hundred turians on a fortress world with four other humans. No biotics, no fancy info-war bullshit, no augmented armor, not even fucking medigel. And we survived. You know how?"

He ticked off his fingers. "Precision. Discipline. Training. And not being arrogant."

She finally exploded. "Admiral, I thought I came here for you to train me to command, not insult me. You and I have different fighting styles, but I don't need someone telling me how to – "

He laughed in her face. "You are really something. You think Torfan blew up on you because you're good? You got those men killed because you're an arrogant little thug."

Pain and fury exploded across her mind, the admirals words echoing the taunts thrown at her so many

years ago by General Tyrson right after Kyle's sons had died.

"_Don't be stupid, Shepard. The SA had needs, and you were it's tool, but no one will know that. They'll just think you got them all killed because you're an arrogant little thug."_

She saw red. She came up out of the chair in a leap, using her biotics to accelerate as she swung her fist at him.

The next thing she knew, she was on the floor, Liara and Tali hovering over her, and her back felt like it had been broken. She wiped blood from her nose and stared up woozily.

"...the shit...?"

Liara's face was set in slightly angry lines. "You … well, you leapt at the Admiral and he disabled you with a single blow."

Tali nodded. "And then had a drink."

Admiral Ahern stood behind them, a glass of something in his hand. "Normally, assaulting a superior officer is cause for rebuke, court martial, and all of that. But I like you, Shepard. You at least have fire, if not any goddamned skill worth spit. Ladies, get her on the couch, please."

Liara hefted Shepard with a grunt, easing her back on to the opposite couch from the one they were originally sitting on. Ahern waited until that was done to continue. "Now, this time, shut up and listen, Shepard."

She gritted her teeth, but the man's method of dealing with her had echos of Rachel Florez in it. She exhaled and glared back. "I'm listening, sir."

He sipped his drink. "Your problem is that you are terribly arrogant and sloppy. You and your team of aliens and marines accomplished a very great deed,I'll be happy to admit that. You took out a psycho bastard who I've wanted to kill for twenty years and managed to survive two battles with an asari matriarch. I'm not dismissing your achievements, or the fact that these two helped with that even having little training."

He finished his drink , setting it aside on the little table in front of the couch. "But don't confuse that with being at the level you should be at, Shepard. Most N7's have a few more years under their belt and a better grounding in the basics. They have a good understanding of what they can and more importantly cannot do. And they have had the arrogance and the idea they were invincible badasses beaten out of them. You, on the other hand, came out of the Penal Legions."

He snorted in disgust. "The Legion trains bullet sponges, not soldiers. They don't teach you proper war-fighting, but the kind of macho bullshit twentieth century armies did. Attrition warfare. Half-ass tactics. Rachel Florez fought at my side and was one of the most incredible soldiers I've known, but she was training a force to be throwaway fodder, not the next generation of the SA military. Instead of having a proper grounding in how to be a soldier, you ended up having a sloppy version of it flung over some biotics."

She could hardly object to that, and he continued. "Forget teaching you command, they just expected you to die in piles. You were just tough enough and stupid enough not to, so they let you get into the regular military, but no one took the time to fix the fuckups in your training – you were too angry to see them, and the SA used your hatred and image as a tool. You used plans to sacrifice your men because you were never taught the kind of tactics to use that would have let you avoid such things, and no one fixed THAT because some rear echelon fucker with more stars than brains sent you off to Torfan to die, and after that no one gave enough of a shit."

He began to pace, eyes intense. "They threw you into the grinder of being a Spectre, and you survived, but I've seen the vids. You lived because you were too crazy and goddamned angry to die, not because of skill, forethought, or tactical planning. Your own combat abilities are shit because you cheat. You use your fancy ass biotic pogo stick to get close before an enemy can react, stun them with a nova, and turn them to soup with that boom-stick you use. You can use a pistol and a sniper, but your ability to actually think like a sniper is for shit, too."

He sighed. "You mastered the skill-sets according to manuals to prove you were the best, but without the actual grounding and context they required to make you successful. You're smart, you have good instincts, and you have a natural skill at small-scale space combat, but you lack focus, Shepard."

He folded his arms. "Little things – like not bringing a helmet, or not thinking about what you do when your biotics are cut off – will get you killed. You use your biotics as a crutch, not a weapon. You react with them, but you don't use them as a force multiplier. Every vid or report about your biotics gushes on and on about the kanquess and your warp, but your biotics is supposed to be there to support your combat, not be the center of it. You rely on it too much and one day a fucker with a phase dissipator is going to ruin you."

Shepard grimaced at that, remembering just how close she'd come to death in that Cerberus HQ with Rachel.

Liara gave a small nod to his words. "What you speak of sounds similar to concepts my early instructors spoke of."

Ahern gave her a look before nodding. "That's because asari commandos use every goddamned weapon they can to bring the enemy down. Biotics, info-war, dirty tricks – saw one take out a batarian by gutting a wounded turian and flinging the blood into the batarian's eyes. They know a fight isn't about how flashy you are, or bullshit like screaming as you charge into a pack of geth, but dropping the enemy."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "Well that's just fucking great. I've spent half my life training to be the best I can, and now you tell me it's all shit."

Ahern sighed. "It's not all shit. But as long as you keep up this … attitude ... about assuming you can beat everything you run into, one of these days you will hit a target that doesn't make stupid mistakes and will become a nice inscription on a tombstone somewhere."

"The other problem that needs fixing is your anger. You just tried to fucking attack an admiral. Do I need to repeat how stupid that is?"

She glanced away. "I apologize...I was – "

Ahern rolled his eyes. "I don't give a shit that it happened, Shepard. You are way too sloppy to land a hit on me. If I bitchslapped Saren out of my face twenty years ago, I can damn well sure take you even now. The problem is you let that anger fuck with your ability to think."

She thought back to her last fight with Rachel.

_"Pathetic. All that training, cross training. Preparation. Studying. For what? A barely in control, bloodthirsty little bitch. Just a Tenth Street Red in a soldier's clothes." _

She sighed. "I .. I know I have issues with it. The anger. I've … worked hard to keep it under control, to prevent it from messing me up. But it's powered me through all the … crap … I have had to endure. It's not easy just .. not getting angry."

Ahern grunted. "Shepard, if anyone has a reason to be pissed the fuck off, it's you. I'm not saying you don't have the right, and I'm certainly not going to defend the shitpile the SA has turned into in the past ten years." He shook his head. "But anger and blind rage make you incapable of reasoning, of planning, of using most of the training you've put yourself through. It makes you weaker, not stronger."

Ahern glanced back at Tali and Liara. "Your problems are different. You may be a badass biotic, but you don't have a sense of tactical positioning yet. In every fight I see, the only thing you really focus on is following and protecting Shepard, and you only cut loose when she gets hurt. You have a few anger problems yourself, if you ask me. Let's not get started on the stupidity of going around in armor without full damage coverage on all joints."

Liara winced. "In my defense, Admiral, I was given the duty of picking the armor we used on the mission and I had little experience with such details."

Ahern shook his head again. "If you're so goddamned smart, Doctor, then you should know the first thing you do if you don't get it is ask for help. A trained soldier wouldn't have made that armor choice."

Liara hesitated. "But I did ask for help, from … a former member of Shepard's N7 strike team. Beatrice Shields."

Shepard shot her a look. "Bea told you that armor was good?" She was going to have to speak with her about that – Bea definitely knew better.

Ahern interrupted. "Jesus fuck, Shepard, you didn't stop her from wearing the shit either. Arrogance. Now be quiet, I'm bitching at the asari" He turned back to Liara. "You need a lot of basics. You and Miss Zorah. Not just how to fight or how to command, but a good grounding on how to protect yourselves in a fight so Shepard doesn't have to charge in to try to save you."

Tali nodded. "I've been nervous about my ability for a while, Admiral...the Migrant Fleet Marines gave me a few basics, but .. I was never planning on joining a professional military force."

Ahern examined her closely for almost a full five seconds before speaking. "You at least are honest with yourself about your skill. That's the first step to becoming better. I think your problem is the same as most of the Migrant Fleet Marines I've seen – you rely too much on toys. Turrets, info-war bullshit, drones. You need a new skillset, young lady, something that I can't ever praise too much, the joys of the art of the grenade. That, and a few evasion techniques."

He turned away from them, moving across the room to sprawl on the other couch. "Shepard, I don't give a shit if you call me Admiral or 'you bastard'. I have zero use for formality and while I am a hard ass about regulations, those are only there to provide discipline for those who can't do it for themselves. The whole reason you are here is to learn how not to embarrass the SA or get yourself killed."

He tapped his omnitool and a haptic video screen emerged in midair, displaying a schedule. "Personally, I think the SA is more likely to be an embarrassment _to_ you, but knowing the ins and outs of the political fuckery, scheming and backstabbing that happens at a command level is a necessary evil. Simplest way to do it is every time you want to hit someone in the mouth, smile at them. Every time you want to call someone a dick, tell them they have an interesting perspective. And every time you are considering setting the room on fire, suggest a small break since you need to take an important call."

He gestured to the screen. "You are going to be here for a total of six weeks. Five of those weeks are needed to refit that pile of wreckage they gave you instead of an actual fleet, and to fix everything fucked up with you and your team. Your crews are fragmented crap and will work together about as well as krogan and salarians at this point, so they will being drilled, trained, and cycled until they ship up or I have them shot in sheer outrage and give you replacements from some other ships."

He tapped the image, the month scaling down to weeks. "Your subordinate officers are not going to escape my notice either. Your Commissar forwarded me the PRIDE reports of your officer cadre, with some of the sections for LTC T'Soni and LTC Tali redacted."

Shepard nodded. "And?"

Ahern sighed. "I am going to have to replace my shoes, because I'm going to have to put my foot up quite a few asses. I never met your Master Chief Cole, but I doubt he wants his son to be a goddamned martyr. Your Supply Officer makes me pissed just reading his report, and your wallflower of an comm officer is as soft as volus shit. I _have _worked with that freak Colms before, and I am going to knock the stupid out of that kid this time or strangle him. Your pilot needs a challenge to remind him he's not God's gift to flying, I have some scenarios for him to try if he thinks he's such a badass."

Tali stiffened. "Joker is the best pilot I've seen. He's up to anything."

Ahern actually chuckled. "Has a fan club, does he? We'll see. If he doesn't, I'm interested to see if we can't knock some arrogance out of him as well." He tapped the planner again. "But most of my time will be spent on you, Shepard."

"We will operate on a six day work week. I expect you ready for action at 0700 and we'll knock off at 1900. Twelve hour days. I'm no spring chicken, so I will have to let some of my co-trainers and subordinates do some of it, but I'll be watching the entire time."

"Mondays , Wednesdays, and Fridays are tactical and combat training, a mix of physical conditioning, simulated combat, sparring, and learning how to USE your biotics instead of fling them around. I'm not biotic. I can't teach you how to refine your skills. But I can teach you how to use each power you have in a tactical fashion."

"Tuesday is command tactics training, where you will learn about space combat, fleet positioning, and the like. I will be taking you through a series of simulated battles, teaching you the concepts behind them, and then letting you develop your own style against me and other commanders here. This station was designed to explore the lessons learned from the turians, salarians, and asari, and we'll cover alien fleet tactics as well."

"Thursday is command political training. You will go over the chain of command, your position, and the sort of things we don't explain to anyone under the rank of Captain or Major. Some of it will piss you off, and some of it will make you hate the SA, but I'll also explain why we have to do it. Half that time will also be spent with my own political officer, Commissar-Major Tanaka, who will be briefing and working with your own political officer."

"Saturday is team combat training. You'll pick an unlucky detachment from your marine regiment, or else three lucky contestants from your officer cadre, and the day will be spent in small unit command and the proper use of info-war techniques, infiltration, and combined arms. I know that you have spent the last year fighting with these two, so I figure I'll spend one Saturday seeing if you three are all talk or not."

"Sunday is a day off. Do whatever the shit you like. "

He turned to Liara and Tali. "Your schedules will be much the same, except on Tuesday and Thursday. On those days I will hand you over to my station science officer and chief engineer, who will train you in specifics to your jobs. You are not professional soldiers...yet I expect you to act like it. That means if you get hurt, I expect you to let me know so we can alter the schedule, and if someone is being a racist asshat, let me know so I can throw someone out an airlock. I have zero bullshit tolerance, and if the SA saw fit to commission you two, it's not my place to disagree, just to make sure you actually can do the job those rank hashes say you can."

Ahern folded his arms. "Questions, Shepard?"

She frowned. "You said five weeks. What about the sixth?"

He laughed. "Let's see if you actually survive five weeks first, marine. I have a little wager I'd like to propose if you do, but there's no point going into it now." He glanced at the steel chrono on his wrist.

"It's still early, but I have a full day of bureaucratic horseshit to deal with before we can start. Head down to the eighth floor and request an officer stateroom assignment, unless you were planning to stay on the Kazan."

Shepard made a show of looking at Liara. "T'Soni?"

Liara shrugged. "My rooms aboard the Kazan are fine."

Tali nodded. "Mine are good, also."

Ahern shrugged. "Whatever. Make sure you report to the front desk at 0700 tomorrow for us to get started." He paused. "And Shepard."

"Yes, sir?"

He smiled. "If you ever take a swing at me again outside of training, I'll break your fucking spine. Are we clear, marine?"

She found herself impressed by the sheer steel in his gaze and voice. She wasn't scared of shit, but at least he could demand her respect. "Clear, sir. As I said... I was completely out of line and I apologize for my disorderly actions."

Ahern nodded. "As long as it never happens again, it never happened at all. Besides, you'll get plenty of opportunities to try and fail to hit me when we spar, so cheer up." He made a flicking motion with his hands. "Dismissed, begone, whatever. I have senators to fellate and budgets to cry over."

She saluted, followed a moment later by Liara and Tali, and he returned it before turning away. Exhaling sharply, she glanced at Liara and Tali before leaving.

When they got to the elevator, Shepard struck the wall angrily. "Dammit."

Liara gently stroked her back. "Sara...you do not usually … act so upset."

She shook her head. "I lost it because something he said was something... I heard before." She hit the elevator's wall again. "It's stupid and it just reinforces what I've worried about being all this time. A no-account thug."

Liara's face clouded with hurt and despair, feeling what Shepard felt. "Sara. Look at me." A hard note had come into her voice, and Shepard turned her head to face her.

"You are not worthless, or a thug. You know that. You have proven that. The words the Admiral used were hard, and he does not understand all the pain you have suffered. But if he is right about being able to fix any perceived flaws you have, should you not focus on continuing to improve, as you have in the past? On proving to him and everyone else you are no … thug?"

Tali nodded, her voice a touch angry. "He can insult me all he likes, I am still young. But Shepard, no matter what that bosh'tet says, no one can blame you for what you've gone through. My father likes to yell at people like that, not because he really believes the person is worthless, but to shock them into listening." She glanced down at the deck, then stepped close to Shepard and hugged her.

"You saved me from death more than once, and I think you're the only person my father has ever backed down from." She let go, her eyes crinkling as she smiled. "Don't beat yourself up."

Shepard found her emotions lurching all over the place – gratitude, fear, sorrow – and instead squeezed Tali's shoulder and wiped her eyes with her other hand. "I'm okay. Weepy like a bitch but okay. Fuck. I just..." She exhaled. "SO much has happened and I'm not ready for it. Hearing him just unload on me like that kinda... too hard to take at once."

Liara took her other hand and squeezed it tightly. "You will never be alone, Sara. If nothing else, we are here."

Tali nodded. "Or we could call Wrex for krogan counseling..."

Shepard's laugh was strained but sincere. "I'll pass, Tali. Last thing I need is him bitching about women crying and talking too much."


	7. Chapter 7 : Training and Tears

A/N:

_It's fun to write to the Rocky soundtrack, did you know? I wanted to give a highlight of exactly what Shepard is being put through, and the kind of things that snuck into my fic as I was writing it that, on hindsight, don't make much sense.  
_

_The Tupari Machine makes it's first strike. _

_For Hazred - think a very old Michael Early._

_Part of this chapter is about the crap the SA is into. The rest is a glance into the sort of training Shepard goes through. I don't plan to belabor this part too long – there's pieces for the other characters – but it will show Shepard moving away from 'screaming biotic badass' to a more thoughtful,lethal warrior._

_New chapters in **Flock of Vandals** and **Living an Indoctrinated Dream**. Read. Review. Please. You won't regret it. _

* * *

_'Training hurts. But you will find the pain of training is less than the agony of defeat or the emptiness of death' – _

_Rachel Florez, 'Not all that glitters is eezo'_

* * *

Shepard thudded to the floor, gasping and trembling, her whole body soaked with sweat and muscles aching.

_Fuck, I didn't go this hard in N7 training. _

Across the room from her, Admiral Ahern lowered himself to a bench, wiping his face with a towel and groaning a bit. "I may not be as young as I used to be, Shepard, but that was just goddamned embarrassing."

Training the past three weeks had been beyond brutal. Mondays sucked.

The first day of training had been the worst. He'd had her show up in her Spectre armor with live weapons to a training facility that consisted of nothing more than four reinforced walls and lots of open space. She'd stood there while he'd instructed the medics he'd brought to stand by and addressed her and a pair of officers that had accompanied him.

"Shepard, I do this to every soldier I train. I've found, over the years, that the best way to make knuckleheads listen to me is to beat their ass until they're crying. Every stupid bastard that's come through that door has been convinced that they are the deadliest son of a bitch in space. Every one of them has had their brains rattled by me. I did it to David Anderson. I did it to Richard Branson. Hell, I even did it to that sorry bastard Dragunov. Now it's your turn."

He gestured around the room in grandiose fashion, while the two officers gave long-suffering sighs. "This is your arena, Shepard. You still think you're the best of the best, prove it. I want you to come at me with goddamned everything. That ODIN, your biotics, omniblades, grenades, I don't give a shit. Everything you have. The medics are here to patch you up and stop you from dying when I hand your ass back to you. These two officers are here to witness and laugh at you."

Shepard had – in hindsight, foolishly – arched an eyebrow. "Sir, that seems unwise. We're not using practice weapons. I'm sure you're good, but what if I end up killing you through some mistake?"

The two officers spent a good ten seconds laughing.

Ahern had simply put his helmet on, wearing only a cheap Onyx armor suit with a stock shield generator and an older looking omnitool. A couple of grenades on his belt. "I've lived through a full kinetic orbital bombardment. I've saved the entire Systems Alliance twice. I've fought Spectres, and armies of turians and krogan. You won't stop me."

He glanced at the officers. "Boys, the usual. If God himself decides to interfere and by some miracle she does manage to kill me, it was a training accident, make sure she's cleared of any wrongdoing, all that shit."

The officer had actually rolled his eyes as he stepped back. "You are a sadistic son of a bitch, sir."

Shepard put on her Spectre helmet, frowning, and set herself in her usual stance, shotgun loose, ready to roll to either side. The bastard wasn't even taking her seriously, wearing Onyx armor that wouldn't stop a good assault rifle round, much less her ODIN. "Your funeral, sir."

Ahern had pulled out a weapon she'd never seen before, a heavy looking pistol of asari manufacture with an oversized barrel, and then made a 'come on' gesture.

"Come at me, marine."

Shepard, trying to think outside her usual box, triggered her omnitool to fire a flare, then performed a biotic charge behind him, sweeping the ODIN down to blast at his legs, making sure to use the wide burst setting to try and cripple him.

Her blast hit empty decking, a second before a shot landed crunched into her stomach. There was a dull whump and a biotic blast shattered her barrier, sending her flying against a wall. She barely had time to react before another shot slammed into her shoulder, sending her Revenant LMG flying away.

She rolled away and scrambled to her feet, only to see the blocky outline of a phase disruptor grenade a second before it exploded and pins and needles erupted all over her body. Shaking off her daze, she rolled to one side again, barely avoiding more shots that rattled her armor with their force.

She came up, only for Ahern to backhand her and send her back to the deck again. Before she could move, he stomped her head against the ground, leaving it ringing, and she blinked as the hot-orange glare of an omniblade stabbed into the deck next to her.

"Dead, Shepard. The fucking shit is this? I've seen better fights from a goddamned hanar juggler! That was fucking pathetic!"

He rose, and kicked her ODIN back over to her. "Get the fuck up and try it again, this time without looking like a goddamned quadriplegic!"

She exhaled, shaking her head to clear it, as he backed away. He had moved so fucking fast she couldn't even react. She squared herself up again, cursing at the pins and needles feeling in her body from the biotic grenade, but knowing it wouldn't last much longer.

She gritted her teeth and set herself. Ahern mimed a yawn. "I'm not getting any fucking younger, Shepard. Either come at me or pussy out!"

She kicked off to one side with her right leg, firing at the oblique. Ahern had moved the second she had, her shot missing completely, and his return fire slammed in to the deck in front of her, sending her tumbling even as he closed in again, no doubt to fuck her up in close quarters while she was stunned.

_Not happening, asshole. _

She came up firing, catching the charging Ahern just barely. The shot staggered him slightly, but he spun with the force of the blast, avoiding the second even as his own gun hand came around and fired. Her second blast had barely missed entirely, but his return fire was more accurate. The glowing blue sphere hit the wall behind her, another bubble of force blowing her off her feet into a stumble towards him.

She managed to control her stumble by forcing her Spectre armor into a lock-joints state, breaking it a moment later as she felt her biotics begin to return. She used that, pushing off the ground with a weak lift to avoid more dreadfully accurate fire, nearly crying as she forced more energy through her nerves to turn it into a full push-off.

She flipped completely over his head, flinging a disc grenade. Ahern kicked it in midair out of the way, firing at her landing spot. The blast caught her in mid air and she completely lost her balance, skidding back. Alarms rang across her HUD as his second shot blasted her in the knee, making her grit her teeth to avoid screaming as she staggered back up.

_Gotta stop that fucking hand cannon!_

She fired the ODIN at his gun hand, barely keeping in control of the recoil with her damaged knee, and he roared as it came apart, his armor buckling under the impact. Rather than reach for another weapon he tapped his omni and vanished.

She fired twice in a wide sweeping arc, hitting nothing. Before she could get off a third, a vicious elbow caught her armor in the small of her back, making her flinch. Ahern did _something _with his other arm, spinning her around to face him, but throwing her off balance. Not pausing, he grabbed her ODIN shotgun while sweeping his foot against her already battered knee, destabilizing her even more.

She tried for a flip, using her off-balance weight and some weak biotic leverage, but rolled with her and used the tumble to twist her weapon away from her grip. He tossed the ODIN away and his omnitool gleamed, forming a gauntlet over his hand which he grasped her arm with. She jolted and screamed as an overcharge shorted out most of her armor's electronics and seared her.

Kicking out with everything she had, Shepard knocked him back, hard enough to send him staggering back. She smiled, her hands going for the Sunfire-B pistol on her belt and bringing it up to fire.

The gun needed a good half-second to charge before it could fire. Ahern landed, flipped to his feet, and kicked it out of her hands before she could even react, following it up with another blindingly fast high kick to her head. The armor blunted it's force, but it left her head ringing and turned her cone of vision away from him. He threw himself down, between her legs, tripping her up and grabbing one of her arms as she fell.

He used the same restriction-grapple move Rachel had on Edolus, using her armor against her, nearly breaking her arm even while he once more drove his omniblade into the decking an inch from her head. "Dead again, Shepard. At least this time you didn't go out in five fucking seconds, so that's improvement, if only from quadriplegic to paraplegic."

She grimaced against the pain in her twisted shoulder and rolled away as he stood. "Jesus Christ..."

He chuckled. "No, just Tradius Ahern." The medics came over and examined his arm where she'd blown his gun out of his hand, while the officers traded credit chits in the distance.

She swallowed a bit seeing the second ugly slot in the decking where his omni-blade had sunk in, and sighed.

He folded his arms, cocking his head a bit. "That flare was unexpected, and you did a good job not panicking when I dropped your biotics. But you left yourself open, which is stupid. The second time you were starting to lose your cool. You had a few good moves, but that mid-air flip was the dumbest shit I've seen in a long time. This is combat, not motherfucking Cirque d'Soleil!"

He shook his head. "Doesn't help your close-quarter combat skills are all tied up with that judotics bullshit. That's not a fighting style, it's a goddamned kata. It ONLY works if who you are fighting doesn't know how to counter it. You tried that shit with Saren and he beat you like a vorcha prostitute, and you still haven't learned why."

He sighed in disgust. "As for the last? Goddammit, Shepard, the M-903 Sunfire-B is a plasma COMPRESSION pistol. It takes too much time to charge the first shot to use it at close range like that. Your armor is real purty – the cape is especially stupid – and I wore Onyx armor not just because you have no chance at really hurting me, but also to show you a point. Mobility and flexiblity trump fancy bullshit every time."

The medic finished with Ahern's wrist, and he motioned the man towards Shepard. "It's not the size of the gun or the thickness of the armor, but how you use it. The best weapons and armor in the galaxy won't turn a rookie into a veteran. They're tools, Shepard. They don't make you invincible, and the more you rely on them instead of tactics and planning, the more likely you are to get in a world of hurt."

"That suit of Spectre armor is designed for asari. Sure, it fits you, but an asari's arm muscles are different than yours. That submission hold won't work on them, that's why the armor's shoulder joint moves that way. You need to have that fixed."

She sat up, as the medics approached, and took off her helmet. "That's the second time in less than five months I've been … owned using that move." She flexed her knee experimentally, and one of the medics began taking off her armored boot to work on it.

Ahern sighed, taking off his own helmet and handing it to one of the officers who trotted up. "Shepard, against my better goddamned judgment, I'm going to tell you something. There's probably not twenty people in the whole galaxy that could beat you down like I just did. Your very first move would kill almost anyone who didn't both have excellent reflexes and a predesignated evasion move for the kanquess-nova combination."

He paused, thinking. "In fact, given that the version of the charge you use is weaker but much faster than the standard biotic charge, most people would not react in time even if they knew the counter for it and still end up paste."

He scowled. "But the problem with that is you are likely to be going up against those very same people who can beat you. They're not going to rely on fancy-ass bullshit to beat you, Just skill. The one fight I truly lost was against a biotic assassin named Tyriun No Kage, who beat me with two fucking pulls. The bastard was unarmed, and I thought I had him, but he fucking flattened me with a Tupari machine, of all the goddamned things, then pulled down an electrical cable torn loose by that and nearly electrocuted me to death. Bastard didn't even break stride."

He shook his head. "Skill and training are better than equipment and sheer power. Because anyone can use equipment. Anyone can throw numbers or raw strength around. You won't get better if you keep relying on crap like that, Shepard."

She nodded, and he grunted. "If you take anything away from this room, it should be that. You had every technical advantage – better armor, better weapons,biotics. I had a popgun and a couple of cheap omni-tricks."

She laughed at the image. "That gun was not a popgun, sir."

He folded his arms as the medics continued checking Shepard out. "The pistol you ruined – and will be replacing with your own funds, by the way – is an asari Acolyte, using compressed mass effect bubbles to generate biotically damaging blasts. Blows up barriers, shatters biotic wall evocations. Throws people around real good. Speaking of pistols..."

He frowned at the Sunfire-B pistol. "That looks unpleasantly familiar. May I see?"

She handed it over, and he turned it side to side. "Heh. I remember this fucking thing. Pain in the goddamned ass, still have scars and silver where that stupid bird shot me." He sighed. "I'm glad you fucking killed him."

She glanced up. "Saren, sir?"

He nodded. "Fought the ugly fuck once. Tail end of the FCW, in the ruins of Hellas II. Just after me and the Legacy squad embarrassed the entire Hierarchy. We were sabotaging a dam to slow turian ground forces, and some bright spike figured out we were up to no good and sent in the Deathwatch along with their newest Spectre to stop us."

He sighed, eyes focused on something in his past, flipping the gun over. "Bastard came after me with a kill team, slaughtered my men in seconds. I took out _his_ men with creative use of construction equipment, but he caught me up as I was fleeing through the dam control system. Nasty fight. Fucker had more toys than the goddamned Batman, and this fucking pistol is why I have a cybernetic lower leg. Only reason I took him out is he thought he'd killed me and forgot the First Rule."

She nodded, remembering Rachel's Rules. "Always check the body."

"Heh, good to see you haven't forgotten that much. Nearly blew my leg off, set me on fire, put two holes in my gut and left me to bleed out. Patched myself up with construction omnigel, a clumsy splint, and bits of a medkit I found on one of the turian corpses. Caught back up to him and got the drop on him – idiot was bragging on his omni about killing me!"

He snorted, but continued. "I was too busted up to finish him clean, but he was too mouthy for me not to try. Ended up backhanding his ass off the dam. Course, by that time, his fucking backup arrived, and I had to retreat, but he never forgot that he got his ass nearly killed by a half-dead human he'd turned his back on."

Ahern handed the pistol back. "Saren is a good example of what I mean by sloppy, Shepard. He was talented with every goddamned weapon he had, had some of the nastiest equipment and weapons in the galaxy, and was a skilled biotic. But he was an arrogant asshole who thought humans were inferior and therefore not dangerous. He assumed he'd killed me because he was some kind of bigshot bird noble and I wasn't."

He folded his arms again, as the medics finished patching up Shepard's minor wounds. "Assumption is the mother of all fuckups. I just beat your ass into the ground without heavy weapons, biotics, or anything but a gimmick pistol, some martial arts, a three-second cloak, a shock-gauntlet program I stole from a two-bit batarian slaver, and my goddamned brain. What does that tell you?"

She glanced down. "I need to train more." She paused. "I need to figure out how to work with what I have in a … better way." She shook her head. "I'm not stupid enough to think I don't need improvement after that, sir. What's first?"

Ahern frowned. "First we have to untrain some of the more retarded shit you do. Get out of that armor and into exercise gear and let's see what kind of shape you are in."

O-ATTWN-O

And thus it began. Every Monday, Ahern spent at least six hours a day with Shepard, focusing half on fixing what he found flawed in her techniques, teaching her two new forms of close-quarter martial arts. He didn't waste time on the details behind these forms or the myriad katas, but a mix of pressure and reaction moves from both styles and several others. He moved her through the motions and then he had her repeat until they were drilled into her skull.

Then came full contact sparring. She ended up unconscious after that, as he had literally kicked the shit out of her, using martial arts styles she'd never even heard of before – salarian, drell, asari, turian, several different human styles – all mixed into a delicate and graceful dance of pain.

"Close quarters battle means you were too stupid or slow to kill the fucker before he got close, or he got the drop on you. Either way, the only goal is to immobilize and kill him as fast as you can. Cripple if you can, cause pain and loss of breath or a light stun if you can't. Even a split second loss in his reflexes is enough time to gut him."

Endless hours on what he called moving from mid to close range, using nothing more than movement and flaws of vision to get close. Shepard learned that it took turian eyes a split second to refocus and adjust to rapidly closing targets moving from the sides to in front of them, while salarians overreacted to feints and could be faked out and evaded by combining high-speed spins with flashbangs.

"Never try blind-fighting asari. They can feel shit you can't, like sharks. Even in the pitch black darkness they will know where you are. Since their fucking flash-step is even faster than a kanquess, your normal charge-slay bullshit will only get you a face full of warp or bullets."

The other six hours Ahern apparently spent on Tali and Liara, or other officers, and she was left to the tender mercies of an absolutely ancient Hispanic retired drill sergeant who would only identify himself as 'Bobby' and who was even more foul-mouthed than Ahern, if less directly physical. His long gray hair was shoulder length, often tied back in a rough ponytail, and he smoked thin cigarillos that he refused to share.

Bobby pushed her through various obstacle courses and hazard ranges, sometimes allowing her to use biotics, sometimes not, in an effort to improve her ability to dodge and react to burst and snap-fire. He'd sit on an elevated platform on a comfortable chair, sipping tequila and listening to sports from Earth, and used an equally battered and antiquated Trizler Mk I sniper rifle from the First Contact War with subsonic rubber rounds to shoot her when she broke cover in the wrong way. The bullets were covered in a paralytic that would lock up her muscles, making further evasion even more difficult.

His approach was different than Ahern's, as he rarely gave her clear instructions, rather expecting for her to learn from her mistakes. He would sometimes tell her advice, cryptic bits of how to move. Lighting would change based on controls he shifted on a regular basis, and the goal was to make it through the course in time without being shot up. The first time she ran it, she got halfway through before she was unable to move, and he simply rolled his eyes at her and told her to start over when she could get up.

Bobby had her work through these courses with no armor (so he could paralyze her) and sometimes with no clear goal of where the exit was, and constantly railed on her in a mix of accented English and profanity-laced Spanish that she was the slowest and clumsiest N7 he'd seen. She hadn't used her Spanish since her days running with the Reds, but found herself responding to his taunts in kind.

"Heh. Me encanta tu culo, chica. Let's see less of it, though, the point of this is to be invisible in the cover, not sacudiendo su basura."

"Chingate, viejo bastardo estúpido!" Shepard cursed back, wincing as he fired shots into her posterior and she flung herself across a ditch filled with spikes to slam into cover. Numbness spread across her hips and she bit back a scream of frustration, huddled in the shallow cover of the broken concrete wall. "Fuck!"

"You sure say fuck a lot, chica. Tienes ganas? Maybe later." He howled with laughter, long gray hair falling into his face.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Tuesdays had been more enjoyable, Ahern covering the basics of space combat. "Since humans are stupid and we love tradition, we always want space battles to be goddamned Horatio Hornblower in space. It's not that simple. Space is three dimensional and a vacuum. Heat endurance, sensor range, gravity – all of these things play a role in fleet placement. You actually have a good eye for small tactics if the fights the Normandy got into are an indication, so we'll focus on bigger ships."

He was patient and crafty, using examples from historical space battles to illustrate the difference in flying a frigate and a cruiser. The heavier ship could afford to take hits and deal out heavier blows in return, but it's slower speed meant she had to be cautious about being flanked. "It's like a single lion facing down a pack of hyenas. Mano e mano, the hyenas are fucked. But if the lion gets too aggressive and they can get behind him, they'll tear out his legs and he'll bleed out."

Ahern showed her the asari combat methods – tenderize with a mix of ships and mobility, then go in for the kill with heavy units. Salarian tactics were elegant, using chaos and tough ships to confuse and tie up and enemy, sniping cruisers to tear apart their formations, and finally a single clean thrust with heavy ships to shatter commands.

Turians were blunt and favored attrition attacks, with their light units springing ahead like claws to tear and weaken an enemy and force them to close with the huge heavy ships of the line. Batarians were cold and dispassionate, keeping tight formations and picking apart single ships while spraying missiles and ECM to confuse and confound flankers, while their few dreadnaughts were platforms for boarding shuttles and clever fragmented rounds that sprayed sensor jammers.

Volus fought like seeming cowards, vomiting forth so many missiles and torpedoes that engagement was impossible, then using heavy guns to pick off anything stupid enough to have taken the missile hits on the chin. Shepard vividly remembered the fire power of the All Due Caution and could only agree. Elcor used ion cannons and heavy armor-shattering weapons to cripple ships and crews, fighting to drive back rather than kill.

He'd surprised her when he asked for her thoughts on geth tactics, listening carefully to her memories of the fights over Feros and Ilos. He'd taken notes and made a point to get Shepard to ask Tali for additional details.

"Shepard, when you teach, you learn. Both by finding new things you didn't know, and reinforcing what you did know. While most of what you know is dumber than a bag of rocks, I got as good as I am by never passing up an opportunity to learn."

O-ATTWN-O

On Wednesdays, the day was split. In the mornings, Ahern had run her through exercise routines while lecturing her on what he called the Tenets of Not Dying Like An Idiot. Focusing on movement, not position. Watching enemy leg motion and the balance of their center of mass, not their eyes. Using firepower to coral and control enemies rather than hammer them directly. Cover as more than stopping bullets, but preventing an enemy from knowing your exact location. Using asymmetrical approaches, never repeating a trick that worked twice on the same enemy.

"If they cannot predict you, they can't prepare for you! If they are ready when you come for them, you're fucked before the first shot is fired."

He focused on speed and evasion rather than 'stand-up' tactics, praising salarian and asari military tactics. Combined with her ability to perform the dancing kanquess, he felt if she could master combat movement as opposed to wild charges, she would be almost unhittable.

"Every goddamned part of the terrain is critical. Bobby should have hammered that into even your empty skull by now, or maybe you like being shot in the ass. Never go in directly! Hit them from the angle they don''t expect and can't fucking see!"

He forced her to experiment with different 'scenarios' – moving from long to mid range under heavy fire, or operating with only a pistol while her armor shut down in several places,simulating wounds. He had her demonstrate her various biotics and designed new tactics to combine them as platforms and movement enhancers rather than just weapons.

After lunch, they focused on weapons. The first day had been just as brutal as the rest, as he had her lay out her typical weapons loadout.

"Sunfire-B pistol. Great stopping power. Shitty when you need rapid reaction. It's a basically overkill, Shepard, and you seem to have a hardon for that. I won't tell you the fucking thing isn't useful – it almost killed me AND you, after all – but you need a second pistol for when shit goes completely to hell. Preferably, something you can carry when not in armor that doesn't look like a goddamned hand-cannon."

He'd had her shoot several pistols, critiquing her stance. "Weaver is for gun-ho idiots who watch too much fucking police drama, Shepard. If you get into a serious pistol fight, you aren't gonna have time to set your feet just fucking so. You'll be running, crouched, something. Lemme show you a batarian stance the SIU uses for firing from cover and maintaining balance."

He was only faintly critical of her shotgun tactics, muttering something about spacing, but aside from a few tips on using momentum to counter recoil, he was almost complementary. "Your ODIN is a wonderful fucking thing, Shepard. Stout enough to crush some fucker's skull in, good sweep close in, chokes for range and slotted hot-swaps for mods and ammo blocks. I can see why it's the center of your combat style, but keep in mind that a shotgun is not an all purpose response."

Then he'd looked over the rest of her weapons – her THUNDERBOLT sniper rifle, her Revenant machine gun, and grenades and omni.

He pretty much exploded.

"Shepard. This appears to be a goddamned Revenant machine gun."

She coughed. "Yes, sir. I picked up one on Eden Prime, liked how it handled. The Avenger always was too lightweight."

Ahern put his face in his hands. "Are you sure someone didn't use your head to dig holes for fence posts at some point, Shepard?" He glared at her. "It's a FUCKING SQUAD MACHINEGUN! How in the name of fucking Chesty Puller can you be lugging around eleven kilos of bullshit on your back and fail to fucking realize this piece of – oh, of course." He spat, voice turning sarcastic. "You get around it with more biotics, don't you, the recoil and weight. More biotic lazy-ass bullshit."

He kicked her beautiful Revenant onto the floor. "I have no earthly fucking idea how you can manage to have overkill on every single fucking weapon you use and still manage to be completely unprepared. Your stupidity is an inspiration to knuckleheads everywhere. The Revenant is a finicky piece of shit. It requires near constant maintenance or the mass railing is likely to go out on you in the middle of a firefight. You can't mod the fucking thing, and as far as keeping it on target outside of very short rifle ranges go, it's impossible. It has shitty armor penetration, and while it rips through shields it won't do dick against anyone in heavy cover!"

Shepard sighed. "I used it for suppressive fire as I closed range, most times..."

Ahern grimaced. "That's even more completely fucking idiotic. You just told me, rather than kill the fuckers when they're over there, you wasted time, ammo, and exposed your position to tie them up and kill them up close."

He got up in her face. "You have a gun for one reason. TO FUCKING KILL THE ENEMY! You do not waste Christ only knows how many fucking credits and lug around a toddler on your back, for fucking suppressive fire! That is why the goddamned fuck we give you marines for! Tell me, Shepard, how many of the hard fights you had involved this weapon being key?"

She thought back, carefully, then frowned. "None, really."

He rolled his eyes. "Take that piece of shit and sell it. You could replace half your marine armament for the cost of that goddamned thing, the only people who use them are guys with dick issues and asari with dick envy."

Then they got into sniping.

"Shepard, the THUNDERBOLT is a goddamned anti-material rifle. Why in fuck are you toting one around? Is it because you need something to compensate for not having a dick?"

She scowled. "This is what the RRU gave me, sir. Most can't use it, but with my biotics I can support the weight. It comes in useful against heavier targets."

He narrowed her eyes. "Shepard, you've said lots of stupid things, but that is so stupid I think I just lost a fucking pile of brain cells. You are specialized in rapid-close quarters combat. You use a shotgun that puts dinner sized holes in armored krogan. The only thing you need this half-assed Widow for is taking out light vehicles, which YOU DO NOT FUCKING FIGHT."

She shrugged. "I can use it as an antipersonnel sniper, sir, I assure you."

"Shit, this I have to see." He observed her fire off rounds at 880 yards, first with biotics, and then without. He didn't like her habit of pausing for almost ten seconds to get her sniper rifle properly on target without biotics, especially given her lesser accuracy.

"Jesus Christ, Shepard. Are you waiting for the target to blow you a kiss? Don't stand there looking pretty, SHOOT the goddamned thing."

A short lunch and she had been back at it, this time with Ahern making her fire off a wide selection of weapons – designated marksman rifles, battle rifles, dedicated snipers. He tore down her aiming, her targeting, and her stances. He railed at her reliance on biotics to steady herself when sniping and made her fire off over five hundred rounds with an Incisor sniper rifle to start learning to control her breathing.

"Your biotics is a tool, but if you rely on tools too much, you don't learn any skill. That turian cop you ran all over space with didn't have fancy biotic crap to steady his aim, and from what I see could out shoot you any day of the week. That's because he had fucking skill and not magical blue bullshit!"

He sent off an officer with some orders, who came back with a lightweight segmented rifle. "This, Shepard, is a salarian rifle. It's called a Manur Sniper Rifle. It weighs seven pounds, has VI assisted targeting, a spotting drone, augmented auto-balancing, and shoots out armor-piercing rounds that shatter once they get past armor. Take that goddamned THUNDERBOLT and rack it in your armory and try this instead."

The rifle shot like a dream, even with no biotic assistance, letting her hit headshots at almost 1100 yards. She looked up and Ahern smirked. "Now you have a long-range backup you can use when you can't use biotics."

He wasn't impressed with her grenades either. "Explosives, hi-ex, oh look, explosives and more fucking explosives. Do you know, Shepard, there is more than flinging around hi-ex when it comes to grenades?" He yelled for one of his aides again. "Go bring me a type VII field grenade layout, and don't fuck up my salarian gamma grenades, those things are collectors items!"

He turned back to Shepard while he waited. "Grenades have three purposes. Flushing from cover and destroying it, preventing enemies from being able to sit in a single location, and denying routes of advance. Anyone who taught you to use them to inflict casualties is stupid. Yes, they can obviously fucking kill things. But I'd rather flush out three enemies from cover and kill them in a cross fire than blow up one and highlight my goddamned position to his two buddies I didn't kill."

He sighed. "The problem with most soldiers is they don't fucking think during the fight. Aim, cover and movement are what determine if you get hit, or if you can hit the enemy. Hitting the enemy is key! Not throwing bullets. Not flinging explosions everywhere. Aim. Cover. Movement."

He jabbed his finger at her. "If you can't aim, then you're just hoping for luck. If they're in cover, then you can't hit them. If they move in a fashion where they counter your own cover, you are fucked. Grenades allow you to stop his aiming by fucking over his ability to sit in advantageous cover. They destroy cover, or force him to flee it, making him vulnerable. And they can shut down or at least hinder his movement."

The aide returned with a web-belt of various types of grenades. "This is a mix I personally use. Four smoke grenades, for mobile smokescreens. Two hi-ex, for cover destruction. Two anti-biotic, for idiots like you. One toxic frag, for area denial. Two UV/burst flashbangs – stops humans, salarians, turians, and goddamned drell. And two salarian snapflak grenades. EMP burst, along with metal frags. Crimps shields and does a number of bots."

He draped the belt over her neck. "Get the fuck out of her and go play with your new rifle. I have other members of your team to beat."

O-ATTWN-O

Thursdays had become her most depressing and irritating day, covering the politics and command realities – and secrets – of the SA. The first session had been also been infuriating and confusing. She'd arrived in Ahern's office, only to find the admiral talking to a Commissar.

The man half turned when she entered. Unlike the simplified uniforms worn by Jiong and Susan, this Commissar's greatcoat was more elaborate. Basically a black-tinted Systems Alliance dress top, it's lower half lengthened to form a long , coat-like trail trimmed in gold, cut back at the waistline to reveal pressed dress trousers tucked into high boots. The red sash of the Commissariat was surmounted by a thinner gold one, and the man's cap was also more elaborate than Jiong's.

The man's dark , aged African features were set off by his startlingly clear pale blue eyes, and his hair was in neat, straightened queue trimmed in a military fashion, mostly gray with a few strands of white. He gave her a wintry smile as she stopped, before glancing back at Ahern.

Ahern's voice, for the first time since she'd met him, was quiet and clear of profanity. "Major Shepard, this is Commandant-General Marcus Hazred. He will be conducting the bulk of today's training. I suggest you listen carefully to what he has to say and keep your questions short. We'll talk after."

Shepard nodded slowly, thinking. Marcus Hazred was the highest ranking Commissar in the SA below that of the High Commandant, and many conspiracy theories put him as the true power behind the throne since High Commandants came and went every few years but Hazred had been in place since the First Contact War.

His voice was an emotionless, smooth baritone that brooked no disagreement. "Major Shepard. Have a seat. Admiral Ahern, I will contact you when I am done."

The admiral gave him a sour look but only nodded, standing up from his desk. He shot a warning glance at Shepard before departing the room.

Shepard sat in one of the comfortable chairs in front of the desk, and the Commandant took the other. He folded his hands together and looked at her critically. "When an officer of the Systems Alliance reaches command rank, there are certain unpleasant truths that one must be exposed to. Some officers take these things well, understanding that the universe is not a place that rewards decency. Others take it less professionally, or are too wedded to their values, views or ethics to cope with the truth."

He glanced at the door, and a squad of Commissariat Lancers entered in full armor and with drawn weapons – mostly sniper rifles. One had a pulse suppression device. They took up positions around the room.

Shepard turned back to face the Commandant. "Am I being threatened? I don't take well to that."

Hazred smiled. "Nor should you. This is merely a precaution. Those who cannot accept the mandates of what the SA is required to do are given a choice – a quick memory block procedure and general discharge from the military, or immediate execution. Luckily, since you are no longer a Z2, you can actually walk away from this conversation alive if you decide you cannot continue to serve the SA."

She exhaled. "You wouldn't go through this song and dance if it wasn't bad. Mind you, I've already learned quite a few ugly things about the SA."

The Commandant nodded. "Yes, Major Kyle. He never agreed with the direction the SA was headed in, and I fear as time passed he became less tolerant. Good men, Shepard, make very poor leaders. A leader must be called upon to make sacrifices, and few good men can handle the ugly math of sacrifice. Still, perhaps this will not go as badly as I had thought, since you already know some of the worst."

His eyes were without emotion, just like his voice. "Tell me. What is the purpose of the Systems Alliance?"

She answered instantly, the answer drilled into her since boot. "The Systems Alliance is the government of the Sol System and it's colonies. It is humanity's military, economic, scientific and cultural center. It protects humanity's home and the dignity, freedom, and chance for upward mobility for all humans, and it's goal is peaceful co-existence and sustainable growth."

Hazred nodded. "Admirable that you can recite our creed from memory. I suppose I should expect little else from one such as you. Have you seen this Systems Alliance in your military career?"

She thought on that sentence, then shrugged. "No. But I wouldn't expect to. Given my past and the terms of my military service as a Z2. I'm … hoping that now things are different and I can see it."

He nodded again. "Then I am afraid I have bad news for you. The Systems Alliance has only one goal, and that goal is the preservation of a portion of humanity under our own uninfluenced control. If the outer colonies must die so that the core of the SA will live, they will be sacrificed. If biotic citizens must suffer so that the next generation is capable of living lives without cancer, then they will be sacrificed."

He pointed at her. "If we need more biotics, we will blow up our own ships. If we need more fodder, we will let our own citizens fall into criminality and draft them. If the poor are restless, we will let crime and economic depression stop them from agitating for more rights. If the rich wield too much influence, we will drain their wealth with citizenship tiers and play them against each other in a meaningless feudal simulation."

"The Systems Alliance only cares about the survival of humanity. Not it's dominance, that is not ever going to happen. Not the happiness of it's people. Not the success of it's businesses. Survival trumps being happy, trumps profit, trumps sentimentality. Every action we take is calculated towards that result. The Commissariat. The Criminal Code. The Penal Legions. The actions at Black-443 with L2 biotics. The deliberate abandonment of Thanas. The mess at Torfan. All of it, Shepard, is geared towards survival."

She opened her mouth to speak but he shook his head. "Let me finish, please. You may scream or ask questions later, I promise."

"The first thing people ask is why. And the only answer I can give them is that 'because we have to'. It was never intended this way. The founding fathers of the SSA relied on brutality, Commissariat oppression, and fascist elements in the government to try and restore order after the Days of Iron. To reign in anarchy, to find a way to organize humanity enough to at least feed them and shield them from the hell-scape we'd turned Earth into. Certain men grew too fond of the power, and the Commissariat corrected that. But the goal was always that, eventually, humanity would stabilize. Survival would be more assured, and the need for more extreme measures removed."

Shepard grimaced, and he continued. "Unfortunately, just as humanity started to reach equilibrium, the First Contact War erupted. Once again we faced not just death but extinction. Extinction is not an option. Thus, we once again committed horrible deeds. We deliberately riled up the turian reaction to drive them on, knowing their own atrocity would stiffen human resistance."

He folded his arms. "In the end, rather than be utterly ruthless, however, the leadership … faltered. They allowed refugees to flee to Earth rather than sealing the Charon Relay and letting everything outside it die. And that lead to Earth nearly being destroyed. If not for the asari, we would all be dead."

He leaned forward. "In the aftermath of the FCW, we were forced to act. We again committed vile acts. We restrained the people. We brutalized the colonies. Taxes were raised and the people were squeezed – because we had to rebuild the SA as rapidly as possible. People complain about freedom, about happiness, about the right to spend their money as they wish – not realizing they could be vaporized tomorrow by pirates or gangers or kill-thrill lunatics like Eclipse. The only thing stopping humanity from flickering out like a light was the SA."

He leaned back. "And when things once more settled down? When it looked as if we could trade peacefully with the Council races, when it seemed they were helping us? When it seemed, finally, we could loosen the bindings a bit and do away with ugly things like Cerberus?"

He met her gaze. "We discovered that we were fools for being so trusting. That salarians have bred up a genophage-like viral plague that creates serial teratomas in most human infants. That their STG has spies in our economy, siphoning funds. In our science universities and tech centers, stealing our own ideas to sell back to us. In our military, copting our troops. That to them, such things are normal – that they would wipe out all humanity tomorrow as long as they weren't caught doing it – just to be a little safer."

"We learned our 'cousins' the asari have sabotaged our biotics and our economy. That they send their siari religion into our worlds to sway our people towards following them and setting aside sacrifice for humanity's future. We learn they are so manipulatory that their word for honesty means something like 'showing everything but what you are planning'. That the Thirty probably have some kind of Prothean ruin or Beacon they've never told the public about. That they literally are in long term plans to disassemble the SA piece by piece and make us a client species, because their own lower classes are tired of sleeping with aliens that don't look like them."

"We learned the asari and salarians have been betraying the turians and each other for centuries. The salarians opened up the rachni relay on purpose, hoping to weaken the asari enough to let them take ascendance in running the galaxy. And the asari subtly baited the krogan into thinking they could take salarian colony worlds, only for it to backfire when they took asari ones too. They've played the volus, the quarians, the hanar."

Hazred gave her a small, chilling smile. "In short, they are all every bit as sick as anything Cerberus has ever done. They merely keep it under wraps better."

She snarled. "I have a hard time believing that. They don't experiment on humans- "

"Shepard, do you really think the batarian slave markets are filling a need for manual labor in this day and age? Yes, some. But we have evidence that salarian STG groups have bought human slaves for experiments. Asari matrons purchase slaves for their little harems. Asari investors on Ilium sold some human biotics to the Collectors for technology used in short-range mass collector technology now driving our mobile mining communes out of business. Volus companies kidnapped humans to figure out what designer drugs would do best on the markets and back the tech-gangs that you yourself got caught up in."

The commandant sighed. "Thus, the SA does what seems like very immoral acts at times. We allow human supremacists to operate, and groups like Cerberus, because we are not capable of absorbing the negative consequences of having our acts fall upon the SA itself. Defending ourselves from the shadow aggression of other races would be used against us to hypocritically say humans were a danger."

"We do nothing about it because we can do nothing safely. Instead we make our own preparations, and work hard to secure the survival of humanity. This is why the Commissariat is so brutal. This is why command commits atrocities such as those you encountered on Feros. This is why, yes, Cerberus answered to SA officials for many years. And this is why we don't let most officers, and no civilians, know the truth."

The commandant gave another sigh. "It is not easy information to take in. Many officers take up service and 'wear the Blue' out of a desire to defend, to be proud of their service, to fight in hopes of a day where fighting is no longer needed. I am afraid the leadership of the SA has decided such a day may never come. Your own revelations, about a race of beings who seek the destruction of all sentient life in the galaxy and who may come for us at any time, does not inspire us to become more lenient."

Shepard was silent for several seconds. "The SA is supposed to be better than this."

Hazred shook his head. "No, it is not. Perhaps it's people should be. Perhaps in a galaxy where others were not so vile, we could turn away from such acts. But there is no way to guarantee human survival except through the most extreme methods. I said survival. We cannot dominate. Our technology is not even close to that of the asari or the salarian except in a few things. For every human there are three salarians, nine asari, twenty-two turians. This is not the plan of men who want to conquer the galaxy. We will never achieve such. It is not merely bitter old men clinging to power, or racists who think they know better."

He pointed to himself. "Each Commissar is … for lack of a better word, conditioned. The result of that conditioning is that almost all of us grow to despise the despotic, feudal, fascist mess that is the SA. We hate what we are forced to perform. And yet, when the time comes for a Commissar to move beyond his or her conditioning and make choices, every single one has reluctantly continued the course we are on. Because there is simply no other choice."

"The President is not briefed on such. The Ministers are not. They are civilians and they do not need to know what happens in the dark. Only the Commissars, command-level officers, the AIS, and a few of the heads of noble families are told the truth. We don't tell you this to alienate you. We tell you this so you will understand. Dragunov was not upset with you for destroying the Thorian. He was upset because your action weakened the SA, and by talking to the Council they could twist your words to injure the SA further. "

She shook her head. "There has to be a basis for … decency." Her voice sounded almost desperate to her own ears, and she couldn't look at the man's eyes.

Hazred shook his own. "How can we apply a human concept to aliens, Shepard? Individually, yes. But collectively? We cannot. We can convince single people. Friends, lovers, those who fight alongside us. Maybe in a thousand years the need for such brutality, paranoia, and oppression will be unnecessary, and we can let it fall. But doing so now leaves us at the mercy of alien cultures who do not see the universe through the lens of our eyes and see humanity as a threat, or a resource, or a toy, but not as a partner."

She grit her teeth. "Then why do we allow in the aliens at all? Why have asari citizens, or salarian ones! Why let turians in! Why not pull a Batarian Hegemony!"

Hazred shrugged."Not all aliens are blind to the sins of their own people. The asari that come to the SA to be citizens are unhappy with asari social demands, with the reduction of the clanless into lives as the lower class. Despite how powerful their economy is, there are too many asari – too many unemployed. Some salarians are fed up with their lot in life, their inability to establish themselves or prove themselves. Some turians value honor and doing the right thing above petty revenge. Notice I didn't mention the Hierarchy in the list of bad apples earlier."

He folded his arms. "We are doing our very best to not be … I suppose evil is too melodramatic a term, but it will suffice. This is a matter of looking out and finding every set of actions is going to hurt someone. There is no simple 'good' or 'bad' choice. We must only insure that we do these acts because they are required, not because we think we have the right, or because we crave power."

"As an officer of the SA, you will be called upon to keep this knowledge quiet. To suppress and prevent anything that might damage humanity's survival from coming into play. You may be called upon to commit atrocity yourself. But at least now you will know why, Major."

She stared hard at the floor. "Dragunov said much the same to me, after Feros. He said he didn't have any problems sleeping at night."

The commandant stood. "Then he was lying, Shepard. I have not had a good night's sleep since I had my conditioning removed, and I strongly doubt I ever will. I now require your oath. Will you, Major-Commander Sara Ying Shepard, uphold the Manswell Doctrine? To ensure humanity survives, no matter the cost in tears, blood, and sin? Or will you decline?"

"You have already performed great service for the Systems Alliance. If you cannot serve in this, you can retire with honor and a clear conscience."

She shook her head. "No, it wouldn't be a clear conscience." She firmed her jaw. "What we are doing is wrong. It might be needed. It might be required. But I lived all these years being able to believe in one thing, one concept that kept me from going fucking crazy at night. That there is something _better _than just goddamned surviving at all costs. That other people had found it, and so could I."

She stood, and met his gaze. "I'm going to take your oath, because I have to believe I can fucking change it somehow."

He stared at her for a long moment before his aged features softened with a smile. It was not the cool, mocking smile she'd seen from most Commissars, but a gentle, almost relieved one. "If it is to happen, Major, I will not be here to see it. But it is officers like you – people like you – that make us determined not to give into the dark simply because we must."

She exhaled. "I swear to uphold the Manswell Doctrine? To ensure humanity survives, no matter the cost in tears, blood, and sin." She swallowed, and Hazred nodded, making a hand motion to the Lancers, who departed the room.

"In that case, Shepard, I hope you can do what you believe so strongly in. Admiral Ahern will return shortly. Go with the grace of our Father." The big man stepped away, his greatcoat fluttering, and left.

She sat down bonelessly, lost in though, and barely noticed Ahern come back in. He sat two glasses on the desk, and cracked open a bottle of scotch. "When they told me, Shepard, I vomited. Almost told the fucker he could take my captain's bars and shove up 'em up his ass."

He poured, filling each glass halfway. "I wish I had some fancy ass words for why I didn't. But there's no goddamned pretty way to say it, is there?"

She took the glass and drank, thankful as the heat poured down her throat. "No, there isn't."

Ahern sat at his deck, sipping his own glass, and pulled a cigar from the box on the side. "I'm not going to fucking coddle you and cheer you up, or give you some kind of pithy wise bullshit that will let you move past this. If there ever comes a fucking time the memory of what you were told today doesn't piss you the fuck off, then do us all a favor and blow your brains out."

She gave a weak laugh at that. "Not much chance of that shit happening." She drank. "I … I wanted to think … "

Ahern snorted. "You wanted it to be a goddamned easy thing? Bad is over here, with fucking horns and claws and gangs and drugs. Good is over there, fluffy white clouds and giggling kids. Horseshit. Life has never worked that fucking way. I guarantee you the goddamned spikes, blues, grays, slows, fours and, assuming they aren't spouting poetry about how 'this one feels like a flower', hanar do the same goddamned thing. We're all fucking dirty."

He took another drink. "That shit is for politicians and creepy fuckers like Hazred and the Manswells to sort out. I don't give a shit about any of it. I'm going to wear my Blue by my own goddamned methods, and so are you."

She gave a reluctant smile. "I can drink to that..."

"Not for long. We have work to do. Training you how not to fuck up when dealing with high level bullshit. Drink your fucking scotch, the quicker we get this over with the quicker I can get you out of my fucking hair."

The rest of the day was something of a blur for Shepard, and she found herself drinking quiet heavily that night aboard the Kazan. Much of what she'd believed in had just gone up in smoke, and dealing with it was difficult when she was reeling from so much other information in her life.

Liara had fallen asleep on the bed, too tired to even get out of her uniform, her features drawn with pain, and Shepard wondered how bad her sessions were. She poured another glass of scotch and quietly wandered across the hall to her stateroom, queing her comm console.

"VI, establish comms – Anderson, David. Captain, Citadel Embassy E44992."

She waited almost a minute before the ping went through, then another two before his voice and image appeared. "Sara? I was about to head home,it's almost 2100."

She smiled wanly. "I … learned some things today."

His face sagged a bit, eyes closing briefly. "Lay it on me, Sara."

She couldn't even muster up the strength for a smile. "About the … things they teach you when you hit O6. The so-called fucking reasons. The … fuck." She found herself wanting to scream again, some part of her soul too weary to let it out.

Anderson sighed, his expression both sympathetic and sad. "Sara, I won't sugar coat things. What the SA does and thinks it has to do is, like I hinted at back after Feros, sometimes necessary. There have been actions taken by the SA that make me ill to think about, and at the same time, they are the only things that stopped worse events from happening."

"I tell myself at night, when I let myself think about it, that it's a burden I have carry, so that the people I protect every day don't have to live with. I tell myself just because we've had to do evil things in the past doesn't mean everything we do now has to be evil."

She nodded slowly. "I just thought everything would be … so much different. That all the things they kept going over like honor, commitment, and courage had more meaning than 'die in a way not to embarrass the SA'."

Anderson gave a chuckle. "I think everyone wishes things could be different. I think maybe the … threat … you discovered might the first step in that. The Council reaching out to humans and quarians might have it's basis in good old realpolitik … but it's still a change in the status quo. I have to believe that, no matter what the bitter men running the SA think, we will find a way one day to live without needed to resort to vile acts and mutual blackmail. I took the oath I was offered because I was sure I could change it. So did many other men and women."

She nodded. "I.. I did too."

Anderson smiled. "I should have known that. I've told you before. Ever since the first day we met, you've been a person who has wanted to do what's right. You haven't always been free enough, strong enough, or fast enough to do it, but you've wanted to. Now you have a position, Sara – more influential than my own, or von Grath , or Kyle in many ways – and a chance to do just that."

She nodded. "It's...just a lot to absorb."

Anderson gestured at the drink. "Which is why I fell into that for a long time. I'm a better, stronger person than I was then, not because I stopped caring, but because I stopped trying to do it on my own. Let Kahlee back into my life. Made peace with some people in my past. Got to see the soldier I think of as my daughter turn her own life around. Don't try carry it on your own."

She looked up. "I can't speak of it."

David folded his arms. "No. But you can still speak of how you feel. And while I'm sure some Commissar is going to demand Liara never speak of it either, there is at least one other person besdies me you can talk to about it,someone to listen." He sighed. "No idea how secure this line is, so I'll just say this – never forget that most people don't know. Don't knowingly participate. Never blame the people for the shit the leaders do, Sara. That is how I get past it."

She smiled a bit and nodded. "I'll try. Good night ...I miss you guys."

"Take care, Sara."

O-ATTWN-O

Friday was almost like a day off, spent mostly tied up in regiment level training and tactics. He'd planned to go three days a week going over physical issues, but decided that she needed more grounding in commanding larger marine forces as well. So she sat with him and several marine colonels and majors, being given hypothetical situations and troop lineups, and basically sat around playing war-games for the day.

Of course, Ahern colored it with enough invective to cover a dreadnaught hull, but he was once again patient at times with her lack of knowledge.

"Shepard, the key in large-scale fighting is to never look at your entire force as a single entity. Each squad, each detachment, each fucking company has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Keep your reactions fluid. Don't tie up your mid-level officers with too many direct commands, give them a playbook and work through it with drills until they know what to do when the situation changes."

"The salarians don't even wait for higher command to give orders – they train their lieutenants and captains how to see situations and drill every single fucking solder how to react, so the big shots can focus on strategy and logistics. Turians,on the other hand, give command level power to even lower rankers, and let everyone on the battlefield call down the kind of backup they need, meaning every squad is a threat that can rain artillery or worse on your head."

"Marines are not turians or salarians. But you can borrow a lot of their tactics and make your own reactions harder to predict. It gives your men an edge. You're too used to leading from the fucking front, leaping about and showing off like some kind of clown in a biotic rodeo. Use your marines properly."

He had her write up how she'd failed on several past campaigns, and then tore them apart,showing her where the real problems were. "Sometimes you have to sacrifice men, Shepard. But you don't let yourself be shoved into doing so. IF you let the enemy control the battlefield and just fight reactively, sooner or later he's going to flank you and some of your boys and girls will end up dead. Fight active! Fight fucking big! You were in the goddamned RRU, use the tactics they did on small squad levels! Make your armor strong-points, not half-assed strike unit that manages to flank but gets smashed doing so."

O-ATTWN-O

Saturday had turned into a mess. The first one pitted Shepard, Liara, and Tali against just Ahern, and it had gone even worse than her one-on-one with him. Wearing only light armor and with an Avenger rifle, he'd tied them in knots.

Biotics were useless against them, as he was moving or dodging the second he saw Shepard or Liara limned in biotic power. He snap-shotted Tali's drones before she could launch them and made a mockery of Liara's creative attempts to corral him with shockwaves, using some kind of omni-tool program to magnetize his feet and wall-walk out of the way just in time.

Antibiotic grenades hit Shepard and Liara alike, and then the bastard was using some kind of magnetized rounds in his rifle that let his omni shoot out electrical shocks. Those rattled Liara's biotics so badly that she dropped her barrier to try to refocus, and like a flash he'd scored her armor with his omnitool just below her neckline and 'killed' her.

Shepard had fared better, drawing on the little she'd picked up and could internalize, but Ahern got the drop on her with a quick cloak and flinging a flat-pak stun grenade right on the one spot on her back she couldn't reach in full armor. The blast felt like her back had broken, and she'd stumbled up, only to find he'd scored her armor and 'killed' her too.

"Shepard, the love-hate relationship you seem to developing with the ground is amusing but depressing. Do you get N7 by fishing it out of a fucking box of Cracker Jacks nowdays?"

Amusingly enough it was Tali who held out the longest, pulling out more and more omnitricks to match his own before he surprised her with concussion grenades. Still unsteady on her cybernetic leg she'd overreacted, and he flashed out of cloak to kick her shotgun down and away and place the barrel of his Avenger against her faceplate.

"We have an N7 soldier, one of the scariest biotics I've ever seen, and a teenage girl I can kill by coughing on. Would anyone – anyone at fucking all – like to explain WHY IN FUCK she's the last one standing?"

Liara narrowed her eyes, but Tali was the one who spoke. "Because you're a sadistic bosh'tet and I didn't let you get behind me!"

Ahern glanced down at the girl, then chuckled. "Well, at least one of you isn't a goddamned moron."


	8. Chapter 8 : Parkour and Other Evasions

_**A/N:**_

_Soundtrack for this chapter: Moby's Natural Blues._

_Liara. Haven't focused on her for a while. Had to show her training as well, since I never really got how Liara could go from basically a civilian with some neat biotics to what she turned into ME2.I mean, in ME1 she could take like two hits on Insanity and down. I found that realistic. Then in ME2 she's doing all kinds of crazy shit.  
_

_Do not even mention that wretched comic. The only cool thing in that entire series was Tazzik. _

_Did my best here with the emotional stuff as well. Progman suggested my first draft was too sappy and sweety. Thus, you have fluff instead of glurge. (**GLURRGE**!)  
_

_Romance fans, blame him. :P  
_

_I also need to touch on one other thing, which I try to fix up a bit in this chapter, namely Shepard's reaction to the revelation of the SA._

_More than anything else, Shepard is having to adapt to the knowledge dumped on her slowly. It will take time (a lot of time) for the final result of what she learned about to fully finish affecting her. She's not going to go on a crusade, and she's finally understanding that she can't fix everything wrong with the SA if the rest of the aliens are just as fucked up._

* * *

_'Wisdom is rarely the words said, and more the moment in which they are spoken. One cannot behold the beauty of the rainbow save at the perfect moment, from the right angle.' _

_\- Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, 'No one raindrop blames itself for the flood'_

* * *

Liara considered herself a person who only resorted to violence when forced. She was a scientist, a seeker after knowledge and understanding. Her whole life had been focused on the simple things that so fascinated her as a child, merrily basking in her mother's praise. The thrill of learning something new. The wonder of touching the past.

Her travels with Shepard had opened her eyes somewhat to the violence of the galaxy, but she still shied away from the sheer joy that Shepard and many of her marines embraced combat with. To her, the violence only ended with the shattered frames of a once living, breathing being, eyes staring endlessly at nothing. She hated the stillness that death brought, even if there were no other options. Violence, all too often, lead to the destruction of beauty, of knowledge, of life.

She had surprised herself at the icy anger and cool dispatch she had shot Ushan with on the Citadel, but if she was being honest, Ushan was only slightly more tolerable than Manae or Yvael had been in her treatment of Liara in her youth. A tiny part of her – or a part of her changed by Shepard – had taken a dark satisfaction in ending her life. The rest of her firmly told herself that Ushan was already dying, and that the person she knew was gone. Death was a mercy in that situation, not merely the expression of violence.

But for the most part, Liara did not subscribe to violence as a method of solving anything. As Ahern kicked her across the room for the sixth time in five minutes, however, she was beginning to understand the appeal of her aithntar's and her lover's outlook.

Ahern didn't spend as much time with her as he did Shepard, but he spent more on her than any of the other officers. He tended to be analytical and critical rather than angry and violent, clearly expecting her to understand and grasp what he was telling her on a mental or intellectual level very rapidly. He held her to extremely, almost punishingly high standards, and didn't hesitate to remind her that a lack of preparation on her part might get Shepard killed one day.

The first day they'd met, he'd told her to come to his office but to make sure she wore armor and had her weapons. Standing in his office,he was looking out over the station from his window when she came in. "Ah, Lieutenant Commander. Sit down."

She did so, a touch nervously. The man's angry and profanity laden rant at Sara the day before had made him seem a brutish thug of little more than violence and the capacity for insult, but he sat down across from her with a fairly placid expression on his face and a gleam of sharp, measuring intellect in his eyes.

"I've been training humans for some fifteen years, ma'am. Asari for only four or five. The methods I use with Shepard are harsh because, well, she's been damn near ruined by neglect, by people using her like a bomb,and worst of all, by the few people around her who claim to care for her not being smart enough or willing to tear her down in order to help her. I don't scream at her out of dislike. It's because she was trained by an old team mate of mine, and on some level she responds to that better than me being calm."

He shifted in his chair, his blunt features taking on a wry hint of amusement. "Besides, I don't do so hot with calm words and cheery bullshit."

The admiral glanced over her, eyes searching and critical. "I don't take the same approach with everyone. That's not out of any consideration for someone's feelings – I don't give a shit, never did, never will. It's about what works. That's my only hard criterion when it comes to training – producing results. I don't think screaming at you or yelling will drive you to work harder. You're clearly an intelligent woman. Asari. What fucking ever." He huffed, then glared at her."

"I'm saying all this, Lieutenant Commander, because it's going to be very hard for me _not_ to scream at you. Not because screaming helps, but because you are doing something so exasperatingly, mind-shatteringly stupid that I have a hard time believing what I'm being ordered to do. And I've been ordered to storm a goddamned fortress filled with pissed off turians with nothing more than an assault rifle."

He gave her a stern look. "I've just been briefed on the situation between yourself and Shepard. I don't like fraternization. Never have. Saw in person what it did to two of my team-mates who thought more with their goddamned sex drives than their brains. I don't approve of it in any way, shape or form, but the brass has signed off on this, and the Commissars basically told me to live with the situation. There's a reason we have regs against things like fraternization, Lieutenant Commander, very good ones."

She nodded, but spoke firmly herself. "Yes, I am aware. I would point out that my own people do not have such regulations in our military forces. Nor do the turians."

He gave her a wintry smile. "You are correct. That is because your people are not fucking human, in case that slipped your notice. Asari and turians react differently than humans when their loved ones are in danger. Turians fight harder and fiercer. Asari get intensely focused. Humans get emotional and compromise themselves and do dumb shit and get killed. I will not mince words or pretend otherwise, T'Soni – you doing this WILL get Shepard killed. It is not a matter of if. One day, she will be forced into a situation in which it's your life or hers, and she'll give up hers. And it will be YOUR fault."

Liara flinched, and inside her mind want to scream out a denial. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm, trying not to clench her fists quite so tightly. "If that is the case, Admiral, it seems unwise that both her commanders and her Commissars are allowing the situation to go forward."

He snorted. "The ugly truth is that almost every case of fraternization in our military history has ended up getting someone killed, or putting someone in a position they simply aren't prepared for. The people in charge of Shepard feel that splitting you up would make her unmanageable or reduce her effectiveness. They point out that Shepard got the job done with you by her side and it didn't make her more vulnerable. I don't buy that, but since no one fucking bothered to ask me what I think, all I can do is make sure you can at least not put yourself in a situation where she'll have to rescue you anytime soon."

Liara winced. "I have tried my best to be … useful. It is part of the reason I am here, after all, Admiral. I do not wish to be a burden to her, much less a danger or something that makes her job more difficult than it already is. But I cannot simply undo what she and I have, even if I was willing to do so."

He folded his arms. "I'm not saying all this just to bitch at you for banging Shepard. When it happened the first time, you were a civilian, and I'm not the one to make the call on if that as a good or bad thing. God knows I couldn't have done a single thing with the bloodthirsty little bitch she was before you came along. Nor am I saying that you should blame yourself for this. She knew better."

He held up a stubby finger. "But you are no longer a civilian, and we're not talking about _her_ fuckups right now. You are an officer of the Systems Alliance. Your focus, your skills, and your life is now in service of the billions of people counting on you. You cannot afford to let emotion, or fear for her, or anything else stand between you and duty. The only way I will sign off on this bullshit is if I know that you can actually do the goddamned job you were handed, and that you are prepared to take steps so that your own inabilities don't get her killed."

He tapped his omnitool. "I am going to evaluate you, as if you were a prospective officer. I am going to test your physical strength and stamina, your agility, and your reaction times. I am going to assess your weapons skills and unarmed combat ability. I will asses your biotics, and most importantly, your ability to think. Others will test how good you are at actual science that doesn't involve digging up dinosaurs or whatever the shit you did."

She didn't get a chance to correct him, because he talked over her. "I suspect I am going to find you are an out-of-shape civilian with high level biotic skills and some specialized science knowledge that has little use on a warship. That means I have five weeks to turn you into someone who can actually not die when on a battle field. I don't like this, but I have no choice and I refuse to half-ass it."

He paused. "You're not cut out to be a killer, T'Soni. You can still back out of this."

She lifted her chin. "No, I cannot, Admiral. I gave an oath to the Systems Alliance, and my people take those very seriously. And if I am to be a part of Shepard's life, then I cannot allow myself to be a weakness."

He nodded. "Then let's see how determined you are."

O-ATTWN-O

The assessment had gone poorly in her opinion. When a man such as Ahern was kind, Liara felt, it was almost an insult.

Her physical strength and reactions he found to be very poor, and her agility subpar. Her reach was good, according to him, but her balance was bad. Liara had always striven to be graceful, like her memories of her mother, but Ahern made a mockery of that, calling it stiff and liable to get her shot.

When she augmented her strength and speed with biotics, he found her acceptable, but reminded her pointedly that she was most likely to need to rely on physical aspects when she was too exhausted to draw on the Art. "Don't your own commandos say that?"

She nodded. "To rely on the waves for power is to be helpless on a calm day."

He snorted. "Asari wisdom is as bad as hanar poetry."

Most of her shortcomings were physical, and according to him, easily fixed with exercise, training and what he called 'elbow grease', a term she failed to understand. It was not all bad points. She discovered she was good at reacting to sudden motions, and that she had a natural talent for following even the most complex chains of instructions when he took her through a series of poses to determine her flexibility.

Her most serious lack,in his eyes, was mobility. "Speed is life, Lieutenant Commander. You stand still on a battlefield and sooner or later some bastard with a sniper rifle is going to turn your pretty little ass into a corpse."

Part of her lack of mobility he attributed to her armor. "T'Soni, Shepard has a fixation on big things. Big guns, big explosions, big biotics." He gave a pointed glance at her chest and shook his head. "You get the idea. The problem with 'big' is that it's cumbersome and slow. To a degree, that's fine for her, since she can leap all over the goddamned place like a pyjak on crack. But her fixation on big has lead to you wearing the armor you have on now. Kassa Fabrication makes fine armor – designed for heavily muscled veterans, big guys who have been humping twenty kilos for years and who aren't gonna need to get out of the way of incoming fire anyway."

"The fact that you are able of using one of their lighter suits and actually are mobile in combat is, in it's own fucked up way, impressive. Stupid, but impressive. But it's slowing you down, and it's a drain on your ability to hurl blue magical bullshit, which is your biggest selling point. Aide! Fitting drone and measure. Bring me some of Mira's old sets."

He'd brought over several armor suits, many of them designed for human biotics. They were light-weight, relying mostly on small eezo generators to boost the effectiveness of the user's barrier, but several also had bands of omni-armor that could be deployed for lightweight, tough protection. He had her try on several, and testing the range of motion and ease of movement in each.

She found them all much lighter and easier to move in than the armor she had picked out, but also more agreeable in most ways than the set of marine armor she'd used prior to that. The shoulders moved in an odd fashion and the back was indecently tight against certain parts of her anatomy...but it was comfortable. After almost twenty minutes, Ahern decided on one of the brands with omni-armor, and once again summoned his aide.

"Take this set over to Commander Niresta over in Asari Ops. Have her refit the electronics and customize it to fit an asari – the shoulder pieces have to be swapped, and padding placed around the lower waist and the small of the back. The chest also needs to be let out, since Mira couldn't even rock a B-cup. Then have Uniform Services paint it stock for LTC Science and ship it to the Kazan." He turned back to Liara. "That Colossus armor you picked for yourself. It's not a bad suit, but it's not close to what you need to be wearing. Take this as a lesson – almost anything a special forces soldier recommends is a bad idea for normal people to use. Now, weapons."

Her omnitool blade had actually made Ahern snicker, given it's origins as tool for removing debris. He had given her an upgrade to a milspec omniblade and said they'd go over that later. But when she had pulled out the pistol Shepard had made for her and displayed it's dual functions, the man had cackled in glee. "Now THAT is a goddamned weapon. Perfect. A submachine gun would be a waste of time, and anything heavier would be stupid, but this..." He shook his head, and asked to fire a few rounds.

She watched as he tested both modes, frowning a bit at the shotgun's blast pattern, but intrigued at the burning wreckage it made of the target panel. "Good recoil adjustment. Firing pattern is tight on the pistol mode, heavy enough to handle armor but fires rapidly enough to handle closing targets. Generous heatsink capacity. Choke is a bit loose on the shotgun, but she's made it adjustable so that's not a big problem."

He looked up at her,something she couldn't read in his eyes. "She made this for you, huh? Guessing she made it custom." His voice had an odd note in it, and he actually gave her a smile. "T'Soni, if you are smart, you will take very good care of this weapon and not waste time learning another. Maybe she's not being as stupid about this as I thought."

He'd shown her several pistol stances that could be altered into bracing positions for a shotgun. Unlike with Shepard, he rarely raised his voice, although his level of profanity tended to increase if she didn't pick up something the first time. She asked him questions about why she was doing this or that, and he took these in calm fashion, explaining the whys behind certain stances.

In some ways, he reminded her of Shiala,in his very patient willingness to put up with what she knew had to be stupid questions. In other ways, especially when she was able to pick up a concept like deflection shots quickly, he was almost friendly. Almost. She remembered his words from the first day – he felt she would get Shepard killed. That pushed her to dig down and work harder, in a way she had not done since her early work in archeology.

O-ATTWN-O

Monday afternoons became her weapons training days. She would fire rounds at a variety of targets, some moving, some static. He would switch up ranges, forcing her to shift from pistol to shotgun and back, and to choose appropriate cover to fire from.

She fired until her wrists and shoulders ached, until her knees were raw from throwing herself into kneeling cover and there were light bruises on her forearms from bracing her arms on barricades. Gradually, under his acerbic remarks and instruction, she became more accurate.

"Never bother with headshots. In fact, never bother with tricky stupid shots at all. Go for center mass, every time. The only things that you can't kill with body shots are krogan, and frankly if you have to fight them you're better off using your biotics than a gun anyway. Keep your goddamned back straight! You slump, and you lose the bracing that keeps your aim steady!"

Wednesday afternoon was martial arts and close quarters combat training. The first day had been somewhat enlightening. She admitted she had no experience of any kind in hand to hand combat, and he'd sighed in disgust before telling her to listen.

"Close quarters combat should always be the very last resort for you. You're a big girl, not some tiny fragile thing, but you don't have the mindset for fighting up close and personal. That isn't always a bad thing – Michael Saracino was the finest sniper in the galaxy, but the man threw punches like a sissy and flinched if you got within a fucking foot of him."

She nodded. "My trainers in my youth felt it was … inappropriate to teach me the arts of ch'thus, or the way of biotic striking. It was for … lesser beings."

He snorted, then smiled thinly. "Heh. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at that. At least you won't have to unlearn anything. I would assume the asari have all kinds of martial arts, but the problem with all of the ones I know of is that they incorporate and require biotics. Why do you think that's a stupid thing for someone like you to bother learning?"

She gave the question some thought before replying. "Anyone familiar with me will know my only real danger comes from my biotic ability, and will seek to neutralize them. Anyone attempting to attack in close quarters will be doubly sure to do so before hand."

He nodded. "Exactly. What you need is a form that allows you to neutralize a target and get them in a position where they can be killed quickly or you can fall back. Now, plenty of people swear by judo, or the biotic version, judotics. God, I get sick of hearing about judotics."

He grimaced, and gestured wildly at the air. "I think it's stupid, since judo has two big weaknesses. First, you don't have any good striking capability. It relies on throws and tosses, and while it uses leverage and all that shit, it also presumes you can disable someone by throws. Humans, you can disable like that. Turians and fucking drell, not so much. Krogan, not at all. Saw a biotic judoka try once. Krogan bit his goddamned arm off, then tore stupid bastard in half like a ketchup packet. Served him right."

He exhaled as Liara's face screwed up at his gruesome imagery. "Second, if you come up against a smart foe, they'll go after your legs, which forces you to protect them. Except judo doesn't have any goddamned moves to protect your legs. So you end up fucking wrestling, and you will lose that way, because we both know the only thing you've wrestled with in your life is probably paperwork, and five weeks isn't enough to train you on that."

She nodded hesitantly. "Shepard was once telling me about kicking … "

Ahern sighed. "Let's not even talk about all the dumb shit I had to beat out of Shepard's combat style. Instead of wasting time on stupid John Woo III bullshit, I'm going to show you a mixed form of a very old human martial art called aikido, combined with a form of drell killing art known as zurshais. Both emphasize a few of the same things as judo – blending your movements with the motions of the attacker, redirecting the force of the attack rather than opposing it head-on. They differ in that aikido is what we call 'soft'. You'll be locking an enemy down and restraining him, rather than trying to do damage like judo. Judo relies on _human _joint configurations and limits, aikido is pure physics. "

"Zurshais is the other half, teaching you how to combine your blocks and throws with lethal strikes to vulnerable locations, mostly one-hit kills. You will turn the enemy's strength against him and then fucking kill him before he can react. I'll teach you a pair of locations for each race. Most are simple. Humans, throat strike, or palm strike to the base of the nose. Asari, same places. Funny how that works. Turians, the hollow just below the jaw, or a hammer punch to the lower heart – does something to their blood pressure. Drell, thyoid bone or just above the crown of the eyes, where the scales hook in."

As she learned, he stressed her ability would be only as good as her physical training, but he told her he would leave that to others. He instead carefully walked her through the motions, ruthlessly correcting her stances and positions, using haptic dummies and having her watch training videos to augment the forms and stances he showed her.

"Five weeks isn't enough to give you more than basics, T'Soni. Remember this. Keep it fast, simple and direct. You get into serious brawling with anybody other than a volus and you're going to be in a world of hurt – you can't train this kind of thing that fast. If you are smart, once you move on from here you will spend time every week continuing to learn and drill."

O-ATTWN-O

While he was drilling Shepard on Monday and Wednesday mornings, she was being put through an intense physical regimen by Commissar Susan, who volunteered to help some of Ahern's drill instructors. Endless pushups, situps, and two mile runs, followed by muscle straining exercises on resistance machines.

The drill instructors focused on what they called 'burn sets', or repeated and rapid activities to engage the natural asari ability to regenerate and rebuild muscle mass quickly. Humans, she learned could only 'bulk up' relatively slowly, although they would reach much greater strength than asari. Asari muscles, different in configuration and evolved for long endurance hunting, could rapidly adapt and tighten in response to pressure.

Susan had her combine such things with focused use of biotics, such as lifting heavy weights while trying to do pushups, or maintain a bubble of biotic energy in tandem with straining her legs on isolation machines. She would encourage Liara, or distract her from the agony in her arms and legs with funny anecdotes or remarkably adept imitations of how other crew members reacted to Ahern's tyrannical training.

"So Ahern is, of course, livid by this point, and asks Joker what kind of 'goddamned love boat' was Shepard running. Joker scratches his head and says 'Weell...there was Garrus and Telanya. Oh, and Ash and Kaiden. And then Friggs and the drunk asari, and Pressly and like six girls from the Consort. Oh oh, and this hottie of a tac ops was arrested for public indecency with two hanar. Or five. I forget. That doesn't even COUNT all the panties thrown after we got on leave...or when we were on Thessia...'"

Susan had stripped off her greatcoat and donned workout gear to exercise alongside Liara, displaying hard, lithe muscles and a frightening number of scars and old slashes all over her back and legs. She worked as hard as Liara did, giving the asari something to measure herself against, even if she always ended up giving out before the Commissar.

The drill instructors had relied mostly on a mix of human and asari exercise methods, but Susan brought in other alien ones, including turian jump lifts and drell biotic resistance training, using one's biotics to increase weight and strain when lifting or pulling weights. Some of the exercises were cobbled together from extranet reports on asari huntress training, others were modified sets Susan claimed she'd had to do in Commissariat training.

Two days a week, Liara rested her sore body as she learned more about being a science officer, working with the Science Team of Pinnacle station and her own subordinates. She spent hours studying particle physics and ship emission curves, and began to find a certain beauty and elegance in the hard math required to calculate and tease out the subtle hints left after a battle or by a fleeing ship. More time was spent simply reading, absorbing as much as she could on procedure, methods, and best practices, much as she had done when younger.

Friday was always spent in biotic training, mostly against Susan and Jiong. While individually their biotics were no match for hers, they worked together like a single machine, picking up on subtle cues Liara couldn't see to react to her own attacks. They had her go through every skill she knew, and experiment with other skills. Her singularity remained her strongest direct attack, and she was able to control a second after several hours of concentrated focus. She tightened her control of her warps and throws, and managed to find better ways to hurl a flare without being exhausted afterward.

But they also taught her what they called 'stupid Commissariat tricks' – their term for small uses of biotics in unexpected methods. These were to surprise and throw off a foe's ability to pin down or even hit a Commissar, such as weak barriers anchored to a push to knock aside smoke or gas, or the creative combination of warp, throw, and any kind of debris to make a sort of shield-ripping 'shotgun'.

The favorite new skill she picked up was an older human pastime they called biotic parkour, using biotic lifts and jumps to avoid and maneuver around and over terrain, maintaining as much movement speed and momentum as possible.

"The faster you move like this, the less time an enemy can hit you. If you dodge enough they will get frustrated and angry, making them sloppy." Jiong had smiled, demonstrating his ability as she tried to tag him with small bursts of warpfire, sliding past one to hand-stand off a nearby wall to avoid another.

Susan had nodded. "And just think how fun it will be to pull this off when Ahern tries to pin you down at your next free for all!"

O-ATTWN-O

The Saturday 'free for all' she got dragged into was, at first, little more than an excuse for Ahern to humiliate them all. By the third week, however,she realized she was seeing improvements. Moving from cover to cover was no longer leaving her winded, and her ability to incorporate both her lighter armor and parkour into her motion was indeed a vast aid.

"STOP GODDAMNED RUNNING UP WALLS, T'SONI!" Ahern bellowed, trying and failing to lock her up with rapid fire pistol shots and a flash bang, then being forced to duck her return biotic shockwave.

Shepard and Tali both snickered.

"I am sorry, Admiral, but that would be unwise." She jerked back from more pistol fire, before keeping her barrier locked in place and rolling out of sight to a new piece of cover. She leapt up and hurled the fastest throw she could, and grinned as it actually hit him dead on, sending him sprawling.

Shepard and Tali pounced on the opening, only to receive lightning fast kicks and end up 'dead'. She followed soon after, but he'd praised her for the improvements she had shown. "You fooled me with that barrier, T'Soni. The throw – the way Shepard and Zorah here took advantage of it – was excellent. I'm officially upgrading you three from 'hopeless' to 'only slightly retarded'. Congratulations. Now , do it again, this time without DYING. There are three of you and I'm fifty six goddamned years old."

By the fourth week, she was far more confident in her skills … and utterly spent. Awakening every morning hurt, flares of agony across her knees , shoulders, and feet. Shepard had gotten a tissue and bone regenerator installed in her quarters, and Liara made regular use of it, wincing against hairline fractures caused by too much stress or too hard a throw. She'd also gone to Dr. Sedanya, who'd given her a range of asari-specific painkillers and suggested soaking in hot baths at the end of the day to loosen muscles.

It didn't help that she felt mentally overloaded as well. She'd crammed for tests and the like in her university days, and had often been required to absorb large amounts of information during dig planning meetings, but she'd been well rested for those. It became difficult to be sure how much of the science training was going to stick with her after they departed from Pinnacle, and she took the opportunity to order as many manuals and books as she could, as well as bookmarking dozens of extranet sites.

The lead science officer of the base felt she had a good grounding – perhaps with weak spots, but as he had said, "No science officer can be truly interdisciplinary. You have a staff, cultivate them to learn what you can't." Still, even if she could now look at the science display and not have to constantly ask for help from her subordinates, she didn't feel as comfortable as she could have wished.

O-ATTWN-O

The Thursday of the fourth week had left her with a sprained ankle,and she sat bonelessly in Susan's tiny quarters aboard the Kazan, her ankle propped up and wrapped in chilled stabilization wrappings topped and hardened with omnigel, as Susan sat across from her.

They'd been working on her parkour when Liara had slipped. The injury was not bad, but it was very painful, and Liara was tired enough that using her biotics to lighten her weight was too draining to keep up for long.

Susan had used her own biotics, helping Liara back to the Kazan. They had first gone to medical, only to find the staff all ashore. Relying on her first-aid training, Susan had carefully wrapped the ankle and carried Liara down to her own quarters, deciding this was as good a time as any to chat while they waited for the medics to return.

"So. We've been very busy, Lady Liara. You've really been working hard, and even if Admiral Grumpypants won't say it, I think he's at least a little bit impressed." The commissar handed Liara a damp, warm cloth, which the asari gratefully placed over her face, before wiping her eyes with it and sighing.

"While I admit that is a somewhat encouraging thought, I am not sure how much more of this training I am able to handle, Susan." Her voice felt and sounded tired, as she rubbed the bruising on her crests from being bounced around earlier that day in training.

Susan looked almost disgustingly unaffected by their workout, a faint gleam of sweat dotting her forehead. She drank deeply from a bottle of chilled ice water and then laughed. "One more week and you can relax, Lady Liara. And look at you! You look amazing after this kind of burn."

Liara gave a weak laugh at that. She had never considered herself 'out of shape' – asari metabolism was too high for any but the most gluttonous to gain much body fat. But she had to admit, muscles were beginning to show in places where only softness had shown before.

She sighed, wiping her face again with the damp cloth Susan had given her. "While that is true, I feel … battered. Not just physically. Mentally, from all I have been forced to absorb. Emotionally. Ahern says that Sara's concern for me and our bond will someday get her killed. I have done my best to improve, but I worry it is not enough."

She fingered the cloth, before running it between the segments of her crest. "And Shepard is struggling as well, and is fighting a lot of self-doubt and anger and depression. It tends to drag me down at times, and I try to not let my own fatigue and worry affect her. We have not joined since this training started, and I am growing worried and distracted."

Susan smirked. "Well... you have to figure, the training itself is hard on her, too. She has some pride in her skills, and it's probably hard on her to go from 'galactic super-badass' to 'being slapped around by an old man'."

Liara shook her head. "It is something darker than that."

Susan nodded, her voice cautious. "She's got a lot on her mind. One thing she probably learned was some stuff about the SA we limit to O6 – captain/major – and above. That is always hard for people to get over, especially someone like Shepard. She's the type of person who is … a touch naïve about certain things."

Liara sighed, and looked away. "I was under the impression she had already been made aware of some of the less savory acts of your government, both by our interactions with Cerberus's vile base and other sources."

Susan shrugged, half turning away to dig in her small cabinet for something. "I can't go into any details. I will say this. It's one thing to learn that there are a few bad apples in society, or that some people are doing Very Bad Things. It's another to realize the scope and scale of it all. I think Shepard was hoping against hope that things were different than they really are, and it's sinking in." She shrugged. "Honestly, I figured you'd already know … from the bond and all."

She crowed with delight. "Aha! Comb."

Liara shook her head. "When inactive, the bond is just a loose sense of emotions, a jumble of ... feelings. And we have not … er, done anything else since training started."

Susan arched an eyebrow, while running the comb through her long hair, smoothing tangles. "That's a bit surprising. Why is that?"

Liara made a sigh of a mix of many things, longing, frustration, and disappointment. "Many reasons, most of which have to do with the fact that we are both exhausted and beaten half to death when we are done for the day. It is, frankly, rarely arousing to attempt such things when you are exhausted and sweaty, and after a shower all I want to do is sleep."

She paused. "Also, I do not want to turn what we have into some kind of coping or release mechanism. And according to Dr. Sedanya, using it as such would be .. unhealthy." Liara shrugged. "I will admit to a certain level of anticipation of this training being over and us being able to be as one in body as well as spirit,but it is merely one more facet of life."

Liara flexed her ankle, wincing. "I'm more worried about Sara's state of mind, and ability to relax, I suppose, than my own. I waited for years, a few weeks delay will only sharpen my enjoyment."

Susan leaned back in the chair, twisting her hair into a tight ponytail before scrabbling in her desk for a scrunchy to tie it off. "I think if you're worried about her ability to relax, you should spent some time with her and relax." She paused. "Fuck, that sounded so blonde. But you get what I mean."

Liara smiled weakly."I do. And I have tried to focus on that, actually. We spend almost all of every Sunday together, but Shepard is worried about rumors. The bridge is very busy most days with the refit and inspection teams, and the training overseers, and there are many eyes watching who heads towards her stateroom. It is easier to not take chances and to merely … what is the term? Hang out?"

Susan shrugged. "Sounds like an excuse for you not to sit her down and have a serious talk with her, Lady Liara. But I guess you have time for that later, and since you are worried about her relaxing, going into super serious mode would mess with that. What _do_ you do on Sundays, anyway?"

Liara smiled wider. "Rest and recover, mostly. I have been talking with her. About her past, and Rachel Florez. About Benezia. About what we plan to happen in our future." She paused. "There is a lot of pain in both of our pasts. We cannot simply ignore it, and we cannot focus on it to the exclusion of all else. Parts of her never had a chance to grow, or be loved. Parts of her are still bleeding inside, and she tries so hard to not let them affect me."

Liara sighed. "But I will not let her wander down bad memories alone. I think that is what matters most. Our bond is wonderful, our lovemaking is … indescribable. But merely feeling me there next to her,or hearing my voice – there are times she is merely content to stare at me and I am overwhelmed with her happiness."

Susan nodded, her own face somewhat blank. Liara winced, and Susan's lips curled very slightly. "Oh,don't worry about me. Still, that sounds … a touch sad,I think. Don't you do anything else besides angst out and then go all starry eyed at each other?"

Liara folded her arms. "We do not … that is... never mind." She shook her head. "You are teasing me. I am finding myself better at picking up on that. And yes, we do. On occasion we discuss simpler things. Many times we simply talk, sometimes to Tali or to Cole. And there are plenty of times we just try to enjoy each other, and life itself – last Sunday she insisted I watch this 'Star Wars' with her, and I have now discovered the food you call popcorn."

Susan giggled, and Liara continued. "On days we are not exhausted, Shepard has been attempting to teach me the kanquess, although progress is … erratic. I managed to put myself into a closet once, and ended up … er, shooting off most of my clothing rather than my body another time."

The commissar stared at her before cracking up. "Now, that's one hell of a strip-tease routine!"

Liara blushed, feeling heat in her crests and shaking her head. "It was not amusing, Susan, when I also had to listen to the so-called 'appreciative' comments of Mr. Dallas, who was passing through the cargo bay where we were training. It was, however, amusing to see him lifted and brought face to face with Sara biotically and threatened with castration."

Susan chuckled, drinking more water. "Ah, that guy. I actually caught him checking me out. That takes real balls, and a real empty head." She laughed openly. "Anyway...how's the ankle? Still throbbing?"

Liara sighed. "Less so now." She glanced back at the commissar. "I doubt you asked me in here to merely suggest I spend more time in relaxation and ask after my condition."

Susan shrugged. "No...although suggesting you get in Shepard's pants to let off steam isn't a bad idea. Still, you're right." She placed her hands together. "I've been doing a lot of thinking of how I'm going to get you through the situation you are in, and I wanted to talk about it real quick. You're not some kind of nutjob that needs a padded room, but you do have issues and I think attacking them head on is better than some kind of slow adjustment."

She paused. "You have three things that are blocking you from where you need to be. First, you have a lack of goals. Without a firm finish line, it's hard to see the progress you've made, much less figure out which direction to run in. Second, you have a lot of recent emotional trauma and not a lot of people to talk to about it. Finally, you have had, until recently, no way to show you that you're not some kind of burden on Shepard."

She paused. "The training, I think,has helped with the last."

Liara nodded cautiously. "I do not feel as if I am … helpless. I am certainly no match for a trained soldier yet, but I have a grounding in how to at least ensure I can defend myself competently."

Susan nodded. "Yep. You are not helpless, but that's not what I meant by a burden, really. You once had a long conversation with Lieutenant Alenko about feeling useless on the Normandy, on having nothing to do. Being given a task – a sciency one, even – and having responsibility has given you something to do beside feel like a fifth wheel."

The commissar rotated her shoulder, wincing as it made a popping noise. "But when I'm talking about goals, I mean … well, long term plans, things you dream about. Goals are going to harder for you, because I think you've gone a long time going after things you actually doubt you'll get. Can you name your goals in the past?"

Liara smiled sadly. "I wanted my mother to be proud of my work, and my achievements. I wanted to be the Head of Prothean Studies for the University of Serrice. I wanted my theories and work to be seen as something besides a laughing-stock." She paused. "I wanted to have my family look on me with love and affection, not scorn, indifference or disgust. I wanted … I wanted people to see the Protheans, not just their technology and weapons. To see their culture and not just their death, but their life."

She swallowed."When all that fell apart, I wanted Shepard to look on me as something besides a silly, foolish girl with silly, foolish problems she had to keep from getting killed..."

Susan snorted. "Well, I think you achieved that last."

Liara smiled. "I did, but … I almost did not. If I had not been prodded, perhaps, by the words of Mr. Dunn, I do not know if I would have had the fear, or bravery, or desperation to force Sara to listen to me that night. A part of me still cannot believe I did so."

She closed her eyes, and her smile grew. "I do not regret it."

Susan laughed. "Rocked your world, Doctor?"

Liara shrugged. "I will simply say it was … the most beautiful experience I have ever felt, or will feel. It was as if all the disappointments and failures in my life had melted away for one night, and all that mattered was she and I. No ship. No chase to save a galaxy. No worries about not being good enough." She felt her smile widen helplessly. "Shepard is not a romantic. But in her soul, that night, I was a goddess. I …"

She wrapped her arms around herself, and Susan nodded. "And your goal now?"

Liara looked up, her eyes determined. "To stay with her and support her, to keep her alive,and well loved."

Susan scratched her temple. "I guess that is a goal. But what does Liara T'Soni want to achieve? Do you not care about the things you pursued before?"

Liara's face turned thoughtful. "Before I saw her die, I was able to hear my mother say she had always been proud of me. I have sat on the throne of the T'Soni, held the reins of the Family in my hand, to cast away or grip. I've been complemented, however narrowly, by the highest of my people." She let her arms fall, pursing her lips.

"The goals I had chased so hard were less about my true wants, I think, and more things I could have thrown in my mother's face to show her that she was wrong." She glanced down. "In the end, they were ultimately meaningless."

Susan frowned. "That? That right there is what I mean. You spent fifty years studying Protheans. Don't tell me you are going to decide that it's all meaningless. Don't tell me you are going to walk away from it and just be ...whatever the asari version of a housewife is. Ambitions drive people, Lady Liara."

Liara rubbed her neck. "I … many of my priorities shifted that night Sara and I bonded. In a very real way, the old Liara T'Soni died that night, Commissar. I never agreed with the goals and the direction of many of the Prothean Studies departments at asari universities,and yet I wished to be feted as one of them? Those were .. silly dreams, not goals." She made a sound of frustration. "I know what you are saying. My interest in the Protheans has not waned, nor has my desire to learn about them. But I cannot say that I long for achievement in that manner."

Susan's pretty features wrinkled in befuddlement. "Then what … I'm sorry. I'm looking at this from a very human point of view, which is completely silly of me. I know that asari value bonds more highly than almost anything, enough so that sometimes when a bondmate dies the survivor cannot find the strength to go on."

She chose her words carefully, watching Liara. "But what do you want independent of Shepard? What can you seek to be, to achieve, that lets you stand on your own two feet beside her rather than behind her?"

Liara considered the question. "I suppose the only honest thing to say is that I do not know. Asari do not have the urgency of humans when it comes to such ideals, given that we have centuries of life to explore and experience." Her expression turned sad. "Given how long humans live, there is every possibility that my own goals while she lives will be supporting and loving her. I fear every day that the violence and danger around us will take her from me .. and I could not bring myself to waste time I might be with her on pursuing something solely for myself."

Susan sat back, folding her arms under her breasts, and thought that one over, her face a picture of concentration. "I think the saddest thing about you, Lady Liara … is that you have no sense of … who you are. Or should be."

Liara tilted her head. "I am not sure what you mean."

Susan exhaled, narrowing her eyes. "You define yourself by what you are, or what use you are to someone else, instead of who you are, and what you want. You spent half your life chasing things that were unattainable. I think if you had achieved any of them, you'd have thrown yourself into your career and never stopped to be a person, to find love, to experience life. And now that you 'achieved' Shepard … you're setting yourself aside for her."

Susan's expression was sad, the planes of her face frustrated. "You don't know what you want because you tell yourself what you want doesn't matter as long as Shepard is happy, but that makes it harder on Shepard. It's not helping her to find her own balance if she can't find anyway to help you in your own life. It's going to end up making her feel like she's using you … because that's what you want."

Liara bit her lip. "Just because I have not determined my path in life does not mean I am letting myself be used, Susan."

The little commissar grimaced. "Really? If the situation was reversed, if you had been forced into leading your House, and the only way for you to be together was for Shepard to resign her commissions and Spectre status to fill some role in your entourage, if she put aside her hobbies of designing weapons and worried all the time about if she was good enough for you … what would you feel or think?"

Susan's commlink barked before Liara could respond. "This is Medical, we're back on board. You said you had an issue with LTC T'Soni being injured?"

Susan exhaled and nodded. "Yes, Medical, we'll be right there." She clicked off. "Just think about what I am saying, Lady Liara. It's good that you want Shepard to be able to move on, to enjoy life. It's great you want to help her. But if you abandon yourself, you will simply end up causing her more pain – and this pain you won't be able to fix."

O-ATTWN-O

The final Sunday before the end of the five-week training session ended up with Shepard taking Liara down to the surface of Inter'sai via shuttle. They had discussed it before, but the last Sunday was the only time where most of the rest of the crew would be on Pinnacle Station, taking part in the various First Contact day parties that would go on all during the night.

Inter'sai was a rugged, beautiful world, carefully terraformed and with a certain fresh vitality to the small communities that dotted the landscape. Lush grasses competed in calm counterpoint with willowy fronds of natural cover, while trees had been planted in vast numbers around the colony – evergreens and cypress trees, swaying in the breeze.

Rather than boxy colony modules or stark, bold colony towers, the people of Inter'sai built clusters of low-slung sloping plascrete buildings, linked with low walls and flanked by narrow rich farm enclosures. The main city, Haddick, was little more than a cleverly disguised broken down pair of colony vessels, recycled and shaped into attractive buildings through landscaping. Sheets of granite flanked tumbling waterfalls and narrow paths neatly paved with interlocking stone surfaces, while cheerful humans worked at small omnifoundries or tended their fields.

Shepard rented a rover and they spent half the day driving, with Sara describing some of the more exotic locales she'd seen as a marine, and Liara reciprocating with stories of her time in the Dark Rim salarian colony of Urchas on a dig. They avoided serious topics, Shepard shying away from anything about her later years of military service after Torfan, Liara rarely mentioning her own youth.

Shepard's usual lack of driving skill was muted, as she kept the speed low, focused instead on listening to Liara.

When they stopped, it was atop a giant cliff face overlooking the lowlands. A brilliant rose-tinted sky was filled with heavy, indistinct gray clouds, the planet's three moons huge in the fading sunset sky. Endless trees seemed to cover all directions, as Shepard and Liara sat near of the cliff, backs against a rocky outcrop atop it, holding hands.

"I never thought I'd see the day, but I'm sooo fucking glad this shit is over, Liara. Everything hurts except my hair."

Liara smiled, then tilted her head. "I too find myself exhausted. But .. I was not aware that human hair had pain nerves. Does that not make cutting it rather –"

Sara laughed, gently. "No. No nerves. Just a figure of speech, I suppose." She trailed a finger down Liara's wrist, blue eyes seeking hers. "I am glad you are here. Getting through this would have been a lot harder without you reminding me what I am doing this for."

The asari kissed her, gently at first, then deeply, drawing back only after her heart began to pound. "I... am glad I am here, beloved. The ocean is more than the waves upon it's surface. I feel the same way about you, Sara. There is …"

Sara turned to face her. "What's wrong?"

Liara shook her head. "Nothing is wrong, Sara. The words 'I love you' feel and seem so … trite and small. They are not enough." She squeezed Sara's hands,letting emotions surge through them both, then let them go to place her hands on Shepard's face, framing her lovely features, staring into those wounded, dark eyes. "I am always here, Sara." She kissed her again, nearly weeping, and Sara just held her.

She could feel Liara's emotions bouncing all over the place, and her own, for that matter. It was happiness...and it was fear. She gently pulled back, lifting Liara's chin. "What is _wrong, _marazul?"

Liara swallowed. "I just found myself wondering what I would do without you filling my life. And I realized … Susan and I talked about goals, a few days ago. About what I wanted, about my dreams and ambitions. And I realized that despite how close we are, how far we have connected, I don't know yours. And I don't know my own. I feel …"

Liara paused, searching for words. "I am not lost, but I do not know what I will do. I remain interested in the Protheans, but the idea of throwing myself back into that work when we face such horrors seems as if I am hiding from reality. I don't know my place. In your life. In what I am to do." She looked down, her own insecurities eating at her.

Shepard nodded. "You said yourself the bond isn't mind reading. But those are pretty hard things to talk about." She smiled, and pulled Liara a bit closer, sitting side by side. She closed her eyes,just enjoying having Liara pressed against her.

Shepard found herself smiling. A part of her felt a little silly, but a part of her felt curiously light and free. When she spoke, her eyes were still closed, a little wistfulness in her voice. "My dreams..."

"I had a dream, of flying among the stars. I had a dream, of being able to put my past behind me. I had a dream, of … being able to live a life like a normal person. I had a dream of children, of being able to say my name with pride, of being loved and mattering more than anything else to someone."

She turned to Liara, squeezing her hand. "I was a sex-slave and a ganger. I'd never see space. I was a Z2 convict. I'd never put my past behind me. I was the Butcher of Torfan. I'd never live life like a normal person. I am barren. I'd never have children. My name was a byword for 'unstable sociopathic bitch.' I would never be able to say it with pride."

She swallowed. "The only person who ever showed interest in me as a lover lied to me, and told me I was a monster. The rest … abandoned me. I'd never have anyone love me like that."

Shepard exhaled, refocusing her gaze. "And yet...look at us. I'm the commander of a space fleet. I'm free of my restriction. I'm just like any other citizen. I'm an noble, at least on paper. My name is now being conflated with 'hero'."

She leaned over, kissing Liara again. "I'm in love with an brilliant, beautiful, wonderful asari, and we will have beautiful blue daughters one day, and I will never, ever fucking be alone, or worry about being unloved. You gave me all of this, Liara."

Liara shook her head, but Shepard stopped her with a finger on her lips. "Yes, you did. I had people who cared about me, I see that now. But none of them were willing to risk everything to reach me. They couldn't understand, or didn't know what to do. You saved me. You showed me I couldn't keep staring backwards. You let me feel how much you wanted _me – _even broken, even ruined, even an emotional wreck with a mind full of poison and bad memories."

She swallowed. "I can feel you. I don't mean the sex. I don't mean the bond. I can feel your soul, like sunshine on my face. I can't explain it. It's just there, Liara." She shook her head. "I don't know what you want out of life. I can't tell you that. Dreams are something that we let ourselves believe in when we are little, humans at least. I can only tell you that I have everything I could want, and if I have to drop it all tomorrow to help you reach your own dreams, I'd do it without a hesitation."

Liara swallowed. "I have no right to ask that of you."

Shepard snorted. "You have every right. You gave me my fucking _life." _She shook her head. "If this is how you get after talking with that D'Alte woman, she may need a beating."

Liara frowned. "No. She is … trying to help." She glanced back up. "You do not think that it is odd I cannot exactly define what I want out of life other than you, Sara?"

Shepard laughed, then shrugged. "Dreams are something I gave up on a long time ago, so I'm not sure what yours might be, or if you should or shouldn't have them. I mean, asari live a long time." She shrugged. "Maybe you had dreams when you were younger? Before all the other stuff...Protheans, worrying about your mom...didn't you have something like that?"

Liara let the tip of her crest lean against the rock. "Perhaps. When I was so young I could barely read or write, I remember a Justicar visiting my mother, seeking advice for some quest she was upon. She was so young, so full of life. Most Justicars are cold and icy, but this one, she laughed, and she paused to tell me how composed I was, and how much honor I would bring to my house one day."

Liara's lips twitched. "It was the first time anyone aside from my mother had complemented me. I remember asking Shiala what the Justicars did, and she told me 'they push back the darkness, and give of themselves that others may live without worry'."

Liara gave a little laugh. "I told my mother I wanted to be a Justicar. She was horrified. In hindsight, I can see why."

Shepard snorted. "The one I ran into didn't seem very self-sacrificing. Trampy and crazy, maybe. Plus, no sex."

Liara could not help the laughter that exploded out of her at that. "I am not sure if I am more amused that you consider the Justicars 'trampy' or that you see their major downfall as chastity."

Shepard muttered something about indecency, and Liara laughed again. "Oh, Shepard. I am beginning to regret not bringing more of my wardrobe with me."

Shepard rolled her eyes, then glanced out again at the horizon. "Still vetoing that shit. No Justicar." She paused.

"I can't say what you will do with your life, Liara. Everything I've wanted, I have. I get the feeling that a lot of what you wanted to achieve – your career, your writings, your work – you let go because you didn't want those things, but the acceptance those things would bring."

She took Liara's hand and squeezed it, sighing a little. "I don't want you to feel like you have to give up your life to be with me. At the same time, I think if you're with me, then we can try to find a goal for both of us. Together."

Liara nodded. "I would like that. And yet that is only half my fear." She swallowed. "Susan made me realize that all I am, all my hopes and wishes are … with you. About you. What if I lose that, Sara? What if you give yourself in being the very Justicar of my youth? If you are lost to me, dying to protect the weak, and in stopping the things to come? Am I to simply accept that it is inevitable?"

Shepard's lips curled into a smile. "Death is always inevitable, Liara. All you can do is remember me when I am gone. I don't plan on dying, on throwing this wonderful life and love away for something stupid. I don't plan on sacrificing myself if I can help it."

She leaned her head back, her raven hair spilling against the stone, the last rays of sunlight setting her eyes afire. Liara could only stare, lost in her beauty, as her voice took on a distant , sad note.

"I'd rather live and burn bright for an instant, than gutter and smolder in darkness for a lifetime. Everyone dies, Liara. It's not how you die, or when. It's not how hard you go out, or if you do it for a cause or because you are stupid."

Her voice hardened. "What matters is that you fucking don't leave anything undone. If I die tomorrow, if the goddamned Reapers show up and say 'chow time,bitches' … I'll die knowing that they had to get through me to get to you... and that you gave me my life." She paused. "And that before I died, you knew I loved you more than life itself."

Shepard sighed. "You aren't usually this … gloomy-doomy. What else bothering you?"

Liara swallowed, saying nothing, before shaking her head. "I worry about you. I have been, perhaps, more upset and confused because you are at times a roiling mass of anger and frustration and ...worse. Susan said you learned of hard truths, and that you were still processing it." She paused. "I did not want to come down here and ruin our time together... but just as I have been distracted with my concerns, so have you."

She looked up at her lover. "I am here, Sara, to listen to you, as you have listened to me."

Shepard closed her eyes, silent for long seconds. "I found out earlier this month about the truth of the SA. About what it does. About what aliens due. About how sick and fucking dark and goddamned stupid it all is. I cried and screamed, and I raged. I called David but I couldn't even say what I felt because who fucking knows what might be tapping on the line?"

She shook her head. "A part of me isn't even pissed at the SA any more. Because when I sit back and really, really think about it? The other races are fucking worse, Liara. The asari and salarians have had thousands of years, and they are STILL doing underhanded sick bullshit. They're not doing it to protect themselves. They're not doing it because it has to be done, even though they hate it."

She laughed. "I had to watch an old man tell me he supported something he hated, because he had no other choices. I wish the SA was different, and the only ones I can blame for it not being different are the same bitches that forced you to leave Thessia and come with me. I'm having problems seeing the difference between the old gang bosses and the leaders of the other races who back this bullshit."

She looked up. "I'm not going to be angry over it. It's depressing, but the only thing I can do is hope that we can find a way where the bullshit can be stopped. It's a fucked up day when I tell myself that I feel sorry for that bastard Dragunov, but I do, because he's too empty to realize all the shit he's done makes him even less fucking alive than I am."

Liara frowned. "How is he … less alive?"

Shepard smiled. "Because I have people who don't buy into that bullshit. Who won't give up on me. Because I sat next to you on a crappy couch, and listened to you tell me about your dig on Shava, and the thing with the space monkey, and the little turian boy, and I realized that rage and being pissed didn't make me feel alive. Just being with you did." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "And as sappy as it sounds, it's remembering that there's good stuff along with bad stuff that keeps me from turning into a goddamned soulless automaton like that asshole."

Shepard turned away, leaning against Liara on the rock face, closing her eyes in contentment. "Don't ever sell yourself short , Liara."

She was silent for several more seconds before speaking.

"One ...one of the girls in the Tenth Street Reds had a boy. Young. Maybe three of four. She would cut the throat of anyone who even made jokes about hurting him. She probably wasn't a very good mother - tripped on sand sometimes, and heroin, and boosted aircars and sold hacked chits for a living. Slept with anybody who'd have her, just for cash."

Shepard gave a weak smile. "And yet I was jealous of that kid, because at least his mother cared. She used to sing to him...sappy , syrupy sweet bullshit that made me boil inside, because no one sang to me to help me sleep."

She glanced down, then up again, looking at Liara. "I'm not stupid enough to believe in fairy-tales, Liara. Or that the power of love will undo all the sick fucking bullshit in this galaxy. But I can remember that no matter how dark it is, how far people fall, how fucked up things become, people can still care. Even people fucked down and out can care."

Shepard pulled Liara closer. "I don't need you to 'be' anything for me, Liara, except who you already are. I don't need you to be useful. I don't need you to fulfill some purpose. All I need is to know you want to be here with me, and that you haven't given up on me, and I can make it."

Liara kissed her. "That will never change, Sara. I will always be with you."


	9. Chapter 9 : Wastelands and Weddings

_**A/N:** Wrex. Garrus. Ask and ye shall receive._

_ATTWN doesn't really focus on these two - although Garrus plays a large role in the latter parts. I wanted to get some exploration of krogan and turian values into the story, as well as some insights into Wrex's past and issues with Garrus and his family._

_Those of you who like Aethyta and Benezia should check out **That Which Was Lost** by Dr. Jekyl. Those of you who like to cry should try a one-shot I wrote called 'Mother's Tears' that I feel is perhaps the best writing I have ever done. _

_If you have questions about some of what is referenced here, leave a review or PM and I will answer as fast as I can. :)_

* * *

_'When your bond-mate has won 'Hottest Male in the Galaxy' awards from not just his own race, but asari, humans, and drell - yeah, you get a bit smug.'_

_\- Citadel Security Executor Telanya Nasan Vakarian , 'Don't Like It? Kiss My Crest'_

* * *

Wrex grunted as he stepped off the battered CDEM shuttle, pausing a moment and staring out the grimy view-port upon the blasted, broken horizon of Tuchanka.

Getting here had been a trial and a half, despite the short distance from the Widow Nebula to the Krogan DMZ. He'd been routed the long way around, unable to find a single ship going the direct way, and the turian liner he'd gotten passage on ended up nearly holed by a ragged force of batarian pirates and human Corsairs blasting each other.

The turian frigates and defense fighters escorting the liner had, he grudgingly admitted to himself, done a good job in tearing the batarians apart. Of course, then the stubborn idiots nearly got in a fight with the Corsairs, but the human in charge refused to rise to the bait and instead withdrew his force.

Even after getting to Aralakh, there was the fun of having to clear customs at the monstrously large orbital docking station of the Citadel Demilitarization Enforcement Mission. The CDEM, established after the Krogan Rebellions to prevent the Krogan from ever threatening Citadel space again, was simple, a blockade. It ghettoized the krogan, crippling them from ever rebuilding.

The concepts it operated on were simple: don't let the krogan build ships. Don't let them gain control of the planetary spaceport with it's associated GTS defenses. Don't allow any one krogan clan to gain dominance of Tuchanka. And don't let too many krogan emigrate off-world. And as such, most krogan never got off-world, and few who did ever bothered coming back.

None of that was particularly hard. Even at the height of their power, krogan were at best indifferent shipwrights. The economy of Tuchanka was very nearly non-existent, except for a few clans that dabbled in extreme-environment survival gear, selling their handmade suits to explorers after testing them against the worst Tuchanka could throw at them. The Citadel controlled the mining revenues of the rest of the Aralakh system in return for shipping in food, medical supplies, and the like. Only the elcor could withstand Tuchanka as well as the krogan, making them the only real merchants one found on it's surface.

If Wrex had just been another broken-down merc, he probably could have gotten past the CDEM pretty fast. The CDEM had no issues with most krogan returning to their home, and if they had a clean criminal record was even willing to let them leave again. But his very name raised hackles most times with the CDEM – getting off-world with Urv had taken a favor on his behalf from Aria, one he'd had to pay off by stomping down one of her rivals. 'Urdnot' was dangerous. It was the name of the only krogan warlord to crush a war priestess in single combat, a warlord who had outfought turians, stymied salarian STG teams, and very nearly toppled the Citadel Council.

On the wild sands, deadly hills and hellish alkaline fields of Tuchanka, names were power.

The station was as big and ugly as he remembered , but there were only a handful of turian cutters and frigates in dock, and a single heavy cruiser. The number of turians on board was low as well, and many of them looked too relaxed for turians. Rather than the usual varren-sniffing interrogation he was subjected to, they just waved him through.

Too many of them had the battered, worn look and ease of handling weapons of turian veterans, without the crisp mannerisms, sneering demeanor and razor-clean discipline Wrex associated with said turian veterans. There were also many more asari than he had remembered, almost all of them very young rather than the handful of matrons and matriarchs present on his last trip.

Still, Wrex decided not to press his luck and took a shuttle down to the only functional spaceport on the whole planet. The CDEM spaceport crouched on the edge of Radyos, the old capital of the Krogan Empire. The old city was surrounded by shredded hulks of kinetic-bombarded hills framing the tattered skyline, by a battered slum of badly weathered buildings broken up by a ring of haphazard fortifications – old starship hulls, bits of construction debris, piles of shattered buildings and rock. The broken pyramid that was once the Hall of the Urdnot was a crumbling mass in the center of the morass, and a haze of smoke from cooking fires and other less appealing sources dimmed the red-tinted sunlight.

The CDEM spaceport and garrison on the surface, by comparison, was all glittering blue steel, hardened kinetic barricades and the grim lines of turian architecture – sharp claw-like pillars, ugly lines like the curve of a turian skull, and the usual lack of any ornamentation that somehow offended something deeply krogan in Wrex. It bulked on the hills overlooking the city, like some slit-eyed predator mockingly watching the prey before pouncing to tear out it's life. The shuttle had been tracked by the lazy rotation of GTS batteries and automated defenses, a powerful kinetic shield snapping off to allow final decent.

The docking area was one-half reception and customs, one half killzone, littered with bunker-like fortification walls and overseen by a heavily reinforced set of balconies halfway up the wall with mounted automatic cannons to sweep the area in case of trouble. Turian snipers leaned against the walls here and there, powerful looking rifles within easy reach.

Wrex sniffed. Something was still off. The CDEM wasn't supposed to be relaxed. Pushing past the tiny bulk of the asari security officer standing next to the shuttle's exit, he stalked forward, heading directly for the short line of aliens he saw by the custom's and declaration desk.

Few non-krogan ever came to Tuchanka – the occasional batarian, here to hunt and prove his Blooding for high-caste status. A few adventuresome asari maidens looking for rough fun and a mate who won't die in a pitiful span of years. The rare elcor merchant, looking to make a quick turnover of his good. Mostly turians, hard bitten mercenary outcasts who made up the defenders of the garrison's outlying walls.

A few thousand asari and turians lived inside the soft glass bubble of fresh air and modern technology, along with a handful of salarians, monitoring the various sensor stations and weather relays. Information flew back and forth from the garrison to the orbital control station, which was in control of adjustments to the ring of orbital mirrors and massive shades that prevented Tuchanka from overheating.

A trio of older turian dreadnaughts hulked in high orbit, permanently pointed toward the planet, cannons and mass accelerators fixed on major population centers in case the krogan attempted a Third Rebellion.

Wrex sighed, flexing his fists and sniffing the chemically pure, dry, tasteless air. It smelled of turian sweat, the sweeter scent of asari maidens lust, the faintest hint of the dry peppery smell of salarian fear, and mostly the ugly hard tang of disinfectants and chemicals. He stomped forward, ignoring the glances of several turian security officers, before coming up to the high desk that read 'Inbounds' in both turian and Old Korogish.

The turian sitting at the desk was an older male, one eye occluded by a wide ugly scar that had actually splintered his plating. Rather than replace it with bionetics or cyberware, the turian had a black plate of metal screwed directly into his skull, krogan style. His armor was thick and scarred, if freshly painted in the CDEM color scheme, and his dark skin was set off by his dirty white plating and his one good, blazing purple eye.

A shining figure of the turian meritocracy, this was not.

Wrex was actually torn between being impressed at the sight of a turian with proper scars and the attitude of Tuchanka, and his usual disdain for anything he couldn't eat without vomiting back up.

The turians' voice was dry, almost bored. "A krogan. Returning to this vakar dungheap. Unusual. Name?"

Wrex folded his arms, spreading his massive shoulders and staring down at the turian. At least this one had a spine and didn't stink of fear. "Urdnot Wrex."

The turian had half turned to type in data and paused, slowly rotating his head to look hard at Wrex. "Welcome back, _sire._" The turian's tone had turned hard and cuttingly insulting, and Wrex actually smiled before leaning forward.

"The only thing the security guards in this place would do is hose your crushed corpse out of that chair if I decided to smash you to paste, bird. I am already in a bad mood." That, for Wrex, was quite a bit of restraint. A krogan returning to krantt and korgasi with news of blood-death of a son should not engage in violence until the Keening was complete, after all.

The turian was about to open it's stupid beak to no doubt sign it's own death warrant when a blue hand fell on the turian's left shoulder. "Vryusas, you should not be so reckless. Urdnot Wrex is too much a polarizing figure in krogan society to simply shoot him for being … rude."

The turian froze, his expression shifting from sneering to cold, searing fear and horror. Wrex had seen many a turian face certain death without a flicker of fear, but he'd never smelled one literally reek of terror before. And he didn't know why the turian would be scared of an asari, yet sneeringly dismissive of a ton of barely restrained krogan rage.

_Stupid turians. _

Wrex turned to look at the asari. Like most of the untrustworthy sluts, this one wore barely anything, a too-tight sheer cloth that hung down just below her breasts, and a longer skirt, both made of diaphanous and silky cloth in several layers. Her facial markings were white runes that circled the orbits of each eye, trailing down her cheeks and up her jawline before meeting between her breasts. Somehow she looked vaguely familiar.

That was _not _the CDEM uniform, not even close.

A leather belt, wide and worn, was slung slantwise across her hips, with a warp-sword on one side and a cut-down plasma-cutter with some sort of barrel attachment on the other. Those weren't a soldier's weapons either, and the warp sword was new, mass produced.

That meant a lot of money, and money had never flowed to the CDEM. It had been staffed with the types of turians that weren't worth promoting elsewhere, and the kind of asari that didn't take bribes.

Something was very, very wrong.

The krogan put his hands on the desk and leaned forward, mindful of the strange situation. He decided that he could afford his version of being polite. "I am headed home. All I need is clearance and for your stupid soldiers to stay out of my way. The faster you process me, the faster I can be gone. The longer you take, the more likely I am to get unreasonable."

The asari smiled, eyes flickering over him in a measuring manner. "No need for that, Cera Wrex. I can do that and more. We can give you transport, help you find Clan Urdnot – or what passes for it – even update you on the trail spoor and clan conditions. And the turians won't bother you any longer ... if you grant my mistress a few moments of your time, first, clanlord. Surely that is not too much to ask?"

Wrex ground his teeth, but the subtle tensing of the soldiers in the bay made him sigh in disgust. Whoever the asari was, the CDEM was answering to her. No matter how much he thought his people were stupid blood-chasers with no future, he wouldn't be the one to start serious trouble with the CDEM. "Fine."

She smirked. "Follow me, then. My name is Lirali S'Yama." She lead him off and away from the main reception and landing areas, down a narrow hallway of steel plating and logos of the Citadel. Wrex had never been here, and felt his crest tighten against his skull as he tasted the air – the faint scent of a hit of red sand made his snout twitch.

Oh, something was very off. He carefully checked his shotgun before following her cautiously. 'S'Yama' was the asari version of Clan Tuchan, a nothing name. A name that only meant one was either an anonymous clanless hoping for mystery...or a member of the Thirty, hiding their identity.

The former, he decided, was no threat. The latter could be, depending on who this 'mistress' was and why she wanted to meet with him.

Turning right at the first intersection, the asari pushed open a wide doorway, leading into an expansively large office, a good thirty feet across. "Queen Matriarch, Urdnot Wrex has arrived."

Wrex stiffened. There were only two asari in all of the galaxy who chose to use that title, and he somehow doubted Matriarch T'Armal would be slumming it in a CDEM fortress.

_Knew I should have had some jaaki before coming down. _

The office was deeply carpeted in deep fibrous piles of blue and light gray, while the north wall was natural rock, a shallow channel dug into it funneling clean, clear water into a shallow pool built into the floor and flanked by plants from Thessia. The other wall was dominated by dozens of haptic monitors, each showing various views from the CDEM cameras or real-time images from the CDEM air patrols that flew in the skies over head.

On the back wall, mounted on neat rows of hooks, was an armory. Warp swords, heavy machine guns, all manner of pistols and shotguns, even an older model turian lance cannon and a krogan warp hammer. The weapons were arrayed around the centerpiece, a long and slender rod of greenish metal with an almost invisible wire trailing from the tip down to a small greenish cube, a mono-filament eezo whip, a weapon outlawed even by batarians for being too cruel to use on living beings.

The center of the room was dominated by a single long asari style couch, surrounded by hovering flat panels of metal – some held food, others haptic keyboards, or monitors. Reclining on the couch was an muscular, lushly endowed asari draped in thickly layered black cloth, a shawl of silver over her shoulders, long dusky blue legs on display.

Hard purple eyes met his, the blue face showing the few signs of age in an asari, her markings dark black harsh looking geometric lines, deranged script and mocking shapes that hinted at darker things than mere ink. "Very good, my lovely little child. You may go, this is a conversation for … adults."

The asari bowed and left, shutting the door behind Wrex, who simply folded his arms and set his feet. "I thought you were dead, witch. Or had finally gone completely pyjak-brains and Aleena shot you out of pity. I didn't expect you to be fouling my homeworld. Mind telling me why you're in the CDEM commander's office?"

The asari laughed breathily, a thin patina of something darker in her tone. "You do not rush to embrace me, to let me feel cold armor and firm krogan muscle against my heated flesh? I am hurt, Wrexy." She sat up, her black clothing sliding about, revealing it to be little more than a hooded vest with sleeves, her bare breasts hanging out. Her tautly muscled stomach was covered in an intricate tattoo of a burning black sun, three bold lines intersecting it.

Wrex forced himself to exhale. The asari in front of him was one of the most dangerous and crazy in the galaxy – even if he had Aria to his left, Shepard to his right and his grandfather at his back, he would not risk fighting her. "I thought you were fucking that little salarian, Jaroth. You already kill him, or just break his spine trying to have more kids?"

She laughed again, tapping languidly at a control on one of the floating keyboards. "Not at all, Wrex. My delicious Jaroth is on Omega, overseeing our operations and making sure your old girlfriend doesn't get too cocky for her own good." Her eyes flashed. "He is comfortable there. As was I, for many years. I was there for some time...but Omega is too small, too tiny for my ambitions. And I'm so partial to krogan lovers...other mortals are so … fragile."

Wrex spat. "In other words, you ran."

Her black-tinted lips curved. "If you think that, Wrexy, you've become stupider than you were when you failed to listen to my warning about your father. I hardly need to run from that melodramatic jumped up stripper. She's forgotten who got her silly ass off of Thessia, spoiled brat."

She laughed. "Let Aria be the Queen of two-bit thugs, half-crest pirates and shitty little smugglers. The Umbral Queen has much larger ambitions." She rose on muscular legs, swaying as she walked over to him. "Ambitions that you could help with, old friend. And I will, of course, help you. You didn't come home to hug your brother, after all."

Wrex bared his teeth as she ran her hands along the stomach plate of his armor. "I am here for my own reasons, to perform the Keening. If you get in the way of that, Jona, I will tear you in half, our past won't stop that."

Jona Sederis, mistress of the Eclipse Mercenary Company, only smiled. "Wrex, you haven't even heard what I am up to! There are … so few people I can gloat to that I don't have to kill afterward." She actually rolled her tongue across her lips before turning away, lifting her hand almost tiredly. "Not that I mind killing them, but it becomes boring all too quickly."

Blue energy enfolded a bottle of something bluish, the contents sloshing sluggishly as the bottle flew into her hands and she uncapped it. "Sit, Wrex. Or I'll kill you, which would be sad, and then Aria would try to kill me, and the entire thing would probably get Urv killed in the cross fire." She pointed to a heavy krogan-style chair of solid metal.

Wrex flinched at the name Urv, and then narrowed his bulbous eyes, thinking. For her to be here, openly, with an office in the heart of the CDEM, explained a great deal of how slime like Okeer could operate so freely. He growled but sat, not out of any fear of her threat but rather to find out what in Kalros' name was happening.

"I have little time and less patience for your craziness today. Why are you here?"

Sederis drank directly from the bottle in her hands, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, still smirking. "The CDEM … has fallen far out of the sight and minds of those who hold the reins of power, oh yes. People – especially silly turians – are always so out-of-sight, out-of-mind." She laughed, a trilling sound of absolute derangement. "Which is funny if you think about it, since going out of one's mind is usually called being crazy. Does that mean all we cannot see is mere illusion, Wrexy?"

Wrex felt something crawling along the ridge of his spine, a feeling curling in his stomachs. Jona Sederis had always been crazy, but she had a sane edge to her crazy now. That only made her more dangerous, and finally it all clicked. He licked the air, sniffing, and shook his head.

"You took over the CDEM?"

Her smirk showed teeth.

"Mm. Turian blood brandy. Racy." She drank from the bottle again, before tossing the half-drained decanter aside. She snapped her fingers a moment later, a burst of warpfire incinerating it in mid-air, before it could strike the carpet. "And to answer your question, no. Eclipse has taken the contract to manage the CDEM in the aftermath of the losses suffered by the turian fleets, and because the CDEM forces manning the place … well, it's a long story."

The story she outlined in her drifty, half-sane fashion was almost comical. Originally she'd intended to work with a certain leader in the Blood Pack to speed up the smuggling of krogan off world. Granted, it would have made the Pack more powerful, but the Pack offered her a cut of mining profits, new contracts, even smuggling routes. There was an asari on staff with the CDEM's sensor division who had a nose for red sand and salarian vimthi powder, and she would let things slide.

At least that was the concept. Her agents had gotten into the CDEM and reported the turians and asari running it were very disoriented. After hearing their reports and video, Sederis had taken action, leaving Omega behind to investigate personally. She ended up finding one of the few turians who was still mostly normal, and discovered that many of the base personnel and even most of the turians and asari manning the station in orbit were affiliated with Saren and Benezia.

It took a little more digging for her to get a hold of rumors about people who'd been dealing with Saren. She'd actually tumbled to the full truth about a week before the death of Benezia – a conversation with Aria, leading to the discussion of 'indoctrination', based on leaked findings from the broken labs of Saren on Noveria.

Wrex grunted. "It's true. Saw the labs on Virmire myself."

He sipped the jaaki from the oversized cup she'd given him, eyes watching her hips swish back and forth as she paced. "Yes, I know. The Citadel is doing a good job at keeping things in the dark tides. But I see everything. Granted, by the time I put all the pieces together, Benezia was dead, and I was left trying to figure out how to salvage things."

She languidly arched her back, eyes amused. "I didn't know much about this indoctrination, except that too many CDEM were affected by it to play along with my own plans. I'd already sunk a small fortune into this effort, so I figured the only way to salvage my investment – and not simply slink back to Omega and boredom – was to be a upstanding citizen and let the Citadel know of what we found. I did that five days after Benezia turned herself into a torch. A day later sixteen cruisers full of Turian Deathwatch and STG teams stormed the place. It was a beautiful bloodletting. Eclipse helped, for the right price."

Sederis licked her lips. "After it was over, the turians were just going to shove more empty headed soldiers here, but I was able to convince little Tevos that a new approach would be … better. The Citadel has a problem with manpower, after all, not little things like a few tens of millions of credits. And the Sisterhood had no love for weak water-dancers like Benezia."

She smirked. "In return for us shutting the Blood Pack recruiters out completely, and ensuring the Enforcement Mission standards didn't slip, the Eclipse was granted operation of the CDEM contract for the next ten years. My girls have to wear those stupid uniforms, and we still have a handful of turian types to round out things, but it is... a good deal. Even that shifty little salarian thought so. Sparatus pouted, but no one cares about him, poor fool. Such a handsome form, and he spends his time in diplomacy."

She made a face of distaste, and despite himself Wrex laughed. "You actually convinced them to let a crazy woman run the CDEM. I'm not sure if I'm upset they think so little of the krogan, or worried about you somehow making my people even worse." He paused. "Garm must be furious that you double crossed him."

Her face twisted into a pout. "Out of his little shell with anger, of course. Even the Suns are pissed, mainly because they didn't think of it first. The Pack is starting all the problems it can for Eclipse. Fights in Omega, problems on the Traverse. Cutting me out of all of the mining they're doing out in the Traverse. But Jaroth feels some legitimacy will not hurt, especially with the Citadel nervous...not to mention we get free pick of all these lovely delicious weapons the CDEM had stockpiled."

Wrex shook his head. Sederis had always been crazy, but there was crazy and then there was flat out lunacy. The Citadel Council was distracted now, and the CDEM never a high priority, but sooner or later some Eclipse sister would start smuggling, or selling drugs, or something illegal. Most asari in Eclipse were as twisted and crazy as their mistress, and none of them bothered with doing things legally even when on their best behavior. Given how far out of the way the CDEM was, he didn't expect them to be on their best behavior for long.

And once something blew up, the Council would hold Sederis responsible. If she was tied to defying the Council, Eclipse would go from a shady mercenary group with suspected ties to organized crime to a target of the Spectres.

"Even for you, Jona, this is stupid and crazy. This is going to blow up on you and the Council will send Bau or Vasir to collect your head if even one person fucks up."

Sederis stretched, laying back on her couch, laughing quietly. "Will they? They're stressed to the breaking point. There's bad trouble in the Hierarchy, since Saren was the poster-child of the Fedorian bunch. Shock waves in the Asari Republic, about Benezia. The volus are unhappy the humans and suit-rats got seats, the batarians are making noise...it's chaos."

She smiled again. "Lovely, dancing chaos. It's my medium, blood-dark paint on a canvas of greedy fools and mere mortals. I don't fear those children on the Council. They're too dull, too boring to figure me out. And they don't care. As long as I keep the krogan in line, I think they're going to turn a blind eye. And given the krogan fear me and revere me, it all works out nicely."

She laughed. "Did you know they have a song about me? I was touched. It's rather simple, like all krogan music, but catchy. I executed a Blue Suns spy to the beat and it goes quite well with splintering turian plating as an accompaniment."

She lifted a slice of some sort of meat from a floating tray nearby and ate, eyes flashing. "As for fucking it all up...I won't be stupid, Wrexy. I'm taking a slice of all the things people smuggle on and off the world, but I can't be bribed to look the other way like the old CDEM could. Cutting the Blood Pack's supply of fresh meat off at the source is worth me losing money on other things. I'm even using it to train the younger Sisters, letting them grow stronger. I figure the children we make here will have the fire of Tuchanka in them, a thirst for sweet blood."

She laughed. "I'm even making a killing from selling medical gear and omnigel stocks to the clans, rather than red sand or weapons. No, I can enjoy this rather boring play of the waves for a time, relax and indulge in more … pleasurable pastimes than crushing fools underneath my heel."

She tapped her keyboard again, reading something before turning back to him. "And if it does go hot, I've already set up my chosen fall girl. It will be a matter of someone not following my orders, I'll kill them and dozens more in 'apology', and this will have been yet another Eclipse cell not doing what they're told and paying the price."

Wrex sighed. She had pulled that trick before.

She lifted another bottle of wine from the stack of bottles in the corner, bringing it into her grasp. "So...if you didn't come to congratulate me, why are you here, Wrexy? And were is Urv?"

His voice was firm, something that surprised him even as he spoke. "Urv is dead. Clan Ganar killed him,ambushed me. I'm here to … tell his mother. Perform the Keening. To call Blood-feud on Ganar, on Okeer."

She hissed. "Urv is dead?" For a flash her eyes were clear, free of madness and instead filled with a mix of fury, disbelief, and sorrow. It only lasted a second, yet it made Wrex feel even worse. Somewhere, in this lunatic's body, was still the friend who'd helped a terrified asari maiden and her compromised krogan bodyguard flee Thessia so many years ago, the gentle lover who'd taken a young foolish krogan and taught him how to fight and survive.

She closed her eyes, and exhaled, her aura flickering with a hint of biotic fire for a moment.

Wrex looked away. "Yeah." There was nothing else left in him to say more. No fire. No life. Just cold, hard, bloody vengeance. "I will perform the Keening, and then I go to find Okeer." He looked up, gritting his teeth. "Is he here, Jona?"

The asari shook her head, then looked up at him. "Okeer isn't here, Wrex. He blew through a couple of days after the big fight at the Citadel, and the rumor has it the Broker is looking for him. But his clan is active on Tuchanka itself. In their old home in Ukrat Steppes, stirring up the broken bits tribes out there and agitating those here."

She tapped the keyboard again, bringing up a display in midair. "They've been a nuisance, but one I've not bothered to crush just yet since they are thousands of miles away, and the Blacklands are nothing I'm willing to take my girls through. I've given though to aerial assaults, but they live off the land, in the old way, and so far haven't been stupid enough to challenge the shadow of Eclipse."

Wrex sighed. The Ukrat Steppes were a series of plains far to the west, where fresh water came down from powerful rivers sourced in the mountains that split Tuchanka's main continent in half. They were separated from the main clan areas by the Blacklands, a disaster area of broken mesas, shattered valleys and knife-sharp canyons ruined in the Krogan Rebellions. The Blacklands were full of ancient and hostile nano-plague infestations, radioactive waste, eezo dustings, and worse.

The mountains framing the Blacklands kept the taint within, but there was only one route through, a route guarded by the Ganar's old ally clan, the Muhka. Trying to navigate through the Blacklands on the ground without a Ganar or Muhka guide was tantamount to painful suicide.

"You could fly me there."

Sederis shook her head. "You would die, Wrex. Clan Ganar already spreads stories that Warlord Okeer defeated you upon the Citadel, and many younger tribes pressed for resources or water in the Vale of Blood are listening to their stories of cool lands and fresh water in the Ukrat Steppes. You'd be facing thousands of krogan."

He clenched his fist. "I need revenge."

Sederis spat. "You cannot gain revenge if you are dead, lovely boy. Urv would not wish his father to accompany him into the Abyss for nothing. Leave the crazy to me, you're not good at it." She paused, eyes narrowing. "I will prevent any Ganar from leaving or arriving on the planet, and my daughters will crush their agitators in Radyos and in the Vale. I can't do more than this, not even for you, not now. Perhaps when the contract is over I can accidentally crash a transport filled with tainted eezo into their precious steppes. But not now."

Wrex looked at her for a long moment. "You said the Broker was looking for him. If your Sisters find him first – "

She cut him off. "If the shadow of the Eclipse falls upon him, we will break every bone in his worthless body and deliver him to you, I swear on the name of Athame. Such shall not be easy, Wrexy. He is the oldest living thing in the galaxy, and even I am a child compared to him." She bit her lip. "He may have hiding places we know nothing off... the clan vanished for centuries, after all. But we will try." Her lips curled into a smile. "You'll have to figure out a way to make it up to me, though."

Wrex sighed. "That's all I can ask. Get me down out of here so I can tell Yranda I got our boy killed, and let her hit me until she calms down." He hung his head, his shoulders slumping slightly, and Sederis frowned before rising to cross the room, running her hand over his crest.

"You forget, Wrex. I, too, have lost a child. There is no healing that wound." Her smile is bitter, almost cruel. "You would be better off merely letting go of it all and grabbing hold of what feeble joys remain for you."

Wrex shook his head. "I am not Patriarch, Jona." He closed his eyes. "The fight doesn't stir me the way it used to. The ryncol tastes bitter. The blood-spatter is just a sticky mess. The soulfire is sullen when I call upon it – the fires of my line dying."

"There's nothing but me to die. If in doing that I can stop Clan Ganar from ruining the krogan further, then it's a better way to die than by inches, by glasses of ryncol and empty dead mornings." He clenched his fist. "Healing is beyond me. All I seek now is vengeance."

Sederis sighed. "Vengeance..how boring. Stay here while I arrange a tomkah for you, then." She was gone in swirl of black cloth and blue flesh, only her scent remaining, reminding the old krogan of simpler, happier times.

"Jona."

She paused at the doorway, glancing over her shoulder, and Wrex met her gaze. "Thank you."

She said nothing for a long moment, eyes flickering through several emotions before fixing in a small smirk. "Maybe I'm doing this just to hope you'll need comfort after you return from Tuchanka and your clan."

O-ATTWN-O

Garrus was more than a little nervous as he finished applying the last layer of Vakarian blue to his dress armor, the bold silver and dark blacks already drying. He'd already trimmed his fringe, touched his talons up, and made sure his facial paint was immaculate. The armor really didn't need the paint adjusted, but it gave him some to fill the last few minutes.

His family was arriving today, to meet Telanya for the first time. His mother's illness had gotten worse, and she feared that travel would soon be too uncomfortable for her to attempt, so she'd basically bullied his father into making the trip now.

He wasn't sure how his sire would react. Their last conversations after taking down Saren had gone … well, if stiffly. Solana would get along with her, if only to be difficult to her sire. And he was sure his mother would like Telanya.

It didn't hurt that C-SEC was singing his praises. Taking down Dr. Saleon and bringing him back for trial was something no one really expected Garrus to do – even Forlan figured Garrus would just blow the sick doctor away. His work on the horrific assault at Lenal had won him the approval of the two turian Spectres sent along to supervise. And his last case, shutting down an eezo smuggling ring without a single casualty, seemed to have even won over Palin.

Maybe now his sire would be proud, or at least accepting, of his son. Garrus hoped so. With a few final strokes of the color stylus, he finished the blue trim on the armor and stepped back to inspect it critically.

Telanya came into the room, wearing her C-SEC uniform, and wrinkled her nose. "Garrus, the living room is not the best place to do your painting in, given the smell." She smiled as she limped over to the couch and set herself down slowly, running her hand over her crests with a sigh.

Garrus winced at the catch in her step. Neither he nor Tel had fully recovered from the near-death battle against the geth in the Citadel Tower. His knee had been replaced by a cybernetic joint that still felt stiff and cold, and her own right leg was still healing from bone replacements. At night, he would trace the scars on her back and shoulders from where she had shielded him from geth fire with her own body, shuddering as he remember her screams.

She caught his sad look and smiled wider. "You're supposed to be happy today, Garrus. Your family is coming."

He nodded, a mandible flickering. "I am. My sire hasn't spoken to me much since I left Palaven, even less after I quit C-SEC. That he's doing so now is … well, Vakarians are stubborn. I haven't apologized for some things I said when I decided to leave C-SEC to follow Shepard, and he hasn't either. We're taking it slow, trying to just get along for now. But I'm nervous how he will react to you, I guess."

He traced his talons over the silvery trim of his family armor. "Being a Vakarian is supposed to be about duty above everything else – above pride, above honor even. Dad was always big on doing things the Right Way. I'm hoping he'll see that what I've gone through in the past year has changed me. I'm worried he'll still see me as a stupid, headstrong boy, and my choice of a mate as immature."

She shook her head. "I cannot say if you are just being pessimistic or if your father is just a bent crest. But I don't think it would be fair for him to toss away what you've done in the past month, in taking down that sick doctor or in freeing the victims, just because he disapproves of me." She rose, walking over to him and leaning her head against his chest. "I do know that even if he does not support you in this, that I do, and always will."

Garrus made a small rumbling sound in his chest, trying and failing to conceal his happiness at her statement, and she smiled. Before she could speak, the comm unit on the wall rang.

Garrus sighed, tapping his omni to pick up the call. "Vakarian."

"Garrus, this is Rithar down in Customs and Boarding. Your family's transport is coming in at dock 993 in about ten minutes. Figured you wanted to be there to meet them. I've got Vasuo and Krios on customs today, so you shouldn't have any problems."

"Thanks, Rith." Garrus clicked off, and began picking up pieces of his armor. "Can you bring the aircar up to the landing, Tel, while I get this on?"

She nodded, picking up the key-card off the little bar set into one side of their new apartment. The weeks following the triumph of Shepard and her team over Benezia had been heady ones. The Citadel had given them a monetary award, which Garrus and Telanya pooled to get a new apartment in the Presidium as well as their own air-car.

She walked down the steps from the apartment towards the air-car docket, smiling at how much things had changed. While she was sure Tevos would never forgive her for the act of defiance she'd pulled in her office, Telanya had been given a note from Ambassador Te'Shora, stating the Council of Matriarchs found Telanya had done her duty in a manner befitting the dignity of the asari people. Her mother had sent her a vid-call, happy and joyous at her daughter's successes and pleased at the news she wished to handfast with a hero such as Garrus.

Now, all she had to do was win over Garrus's parents. Once that would have daunted her. After the past six months, it mostly amused her. She'd faced alien terror units, literal space monsters, geth, and gone up against one of the deadliest Spectres in the galaxy.

She could handle cranky parents.

She got into their air-car, a longer model than usual with three rows of seats rather than the normal two. Garrus had found it at a volus dealership, the car originally designed for elcor and rescaled to fit smaller passengers. The purple and white car ascended smoothly up the docket and she brought it around to the front of the apartment, just as Garrus stepped out and locked the door, ducking under the open door to sit next to her.

"You still look nervous, Garrus. Everything will be fine."

He ran a hand over his fringe,shrugging. "My spurs are about to pop, I think. Still, since Mom and Solana are there, maybe he won't be such a vukar-beast about things. I'm sure she'll like you. She's always encouraged me to follow my heart."

She brought the car into the main traffic lane leading to Kithoi Ward, smiling. She'd recently changed her facial markings, removing her old patterns and replacing them with a tracery of lines in the same blue that Garrus's family used. She didn't match his patterns – that would be very presumptuous – but the asari pattern she chose was one of loving loyalty and determination. Maybe if Garrus' family was familiar with the asari meanings, that would make a good impression.

The car dipped and shuddered as it hit the air-boundary shell over the Wards, and she brought the acceleration down as it arced over the Kithoi docks a few minutes later, before pulling it into the restricted landing zones next to the docking area. As she powered down the car, a salarian C-SEC patroller started to walk over, no doubt preparing to tell them to move on, but she hung the C-SEC placard in the window and he merely nodded and moved on himself.

Garrus ducked out of the car, clamping his mandibles down,and took Telanya's hand as they walked down the pedway towards the docking lane. The docks in Kithoi were lightly filled, and the sharp lines of the turian patrol boat turned private cutter was the only ship she could see nearby. Like all turian ships, the lines of the cutter were angular and aggressive, like a long knife with small wings to either side.

Even as the mag-lock assembly finished clamping down and automatic robotic arms connected the service gantries and fueling hoses to the ship, the main hatch spiraled open,and three turians disembarked.

The two females were roughly the same height, both with the same tan skin and blue-white plates of Garrus himself. Bold blue markings dipped below each eye, to cross the cheeks and trail down the mandibles. Their fringes were shorter, more flared, and their hips wider than Garrus, both having slender waists.

The younger turian wore light padded armor, black with blue trim, along with a thin white sash over her shoulder that was knotted intricately at her belt, displaying her honors as Hierarchy Science Advisor. Her boots were high and flaring, dark black trimmed in vakar fur, and her talons hidden under thin black gloves. Her eyes were smaller and narrow than her brother, but her expression was friendly and open.

Her mother was slightly heavier built, with a visible slump to her stance. She wore a thick, multilayer robe of Vakarian blue, with panels of soft white heavy cloth trailing over her hips and a half-hood over her head. Narrow hard boots of white leather covered her feet. Her face was narrower than that of her daughter, her mandibles tight against the jaw, and she leaned on a smooth cane of white metal. A medical package of some kind was attached to a thick black leather belt that wrapped around her narrow waist.

Behind them, and towering over them, was a male turian. His plates were darker and thicker than those on Garrus, his stance almost stiff. His left eye had been replaced with a cybernetic implant that curled halfway down the side of his face, and his armor was almost identical to Garrus's own, in sharp blacks, blues,and silvers. The crimson and black rank-sash of a General of the Autarch Rank hung around his neck, and four glittering lines of crimson that ended in sharp claw-like glyphs glimmered fitfully on the chest of the armor – one for each award of the Primarch's Favor, one of the highest awards in the Hierarchy.

Regilus Vakarian folded his arms as he came to a stop in front of his son, his wife and daughter a step behind. Garrus made a sort of half-step and crossed one arm in front of him, dipping his head. "Sire, welcome. I am happy you all made it. I trust that your trip was...comfortable? The cutter is new."

The older turian nodded sharply, a mandible slowly flicking. "For the most part, Garrus, yes. There was some excitement with pirates that were seen off in quick motions by our escort. The cutter is a recent addition, the yacht was just too ostentatious for my taste. I donated it to the Fund for the Helpless." The single gray eye flicked over to examine Telanya. "You have yet to introduce your companion, son."

Garrus nervously coughed. "I – "

Telanya frowned, and made an asari bow. "General, my name is Telanya, daughter of Nasan, of no clan. I am a Officer in C-SEC Special Response, and Garrus' bondmate. I am delighted to meet you and your family."

Regilus gave a turian smile. "Thank you. I am Garrus's father, Regilus. This is my mate, Mitisia, and my daughter, Solana. Garrus was somewhat vague as to the nature of your relationship until recently."

Solana gave a laugh. "Oh, spirits, here we go."

Garrus sighed. "Let's get you to the hotel first, sire. Makes for a better place to discuss things than out in the middle of the docks."

The elder Vakarian grunted and ducked back inside the ship, exiting carrying two heavy black plastic cases,one of which he handed to Garrus. The group passed through the scanners at customs with no issues, although Regilus had to surrender his pistol.

They got into the air-car, Garrus's mother flicking an amused mandible. "You managed to afford a very nice vehicle, Garrus. I'm guessing you and Cina Telanya here have had some financial success?"

Garrus coughed as the car took off. "Some. We both got promoted in C-SEC, me to Senior Detective and her to Officer, and were given a pretty big monetary award from the Council for taking down Saren and Benezia, along with medals and citizenship in the Systems Alliance."

Regilus's voice was dry. "Humans come up with the most random awards. I'm not sure why they even made such a gesture. What next, free levo cuisine for life?"

Telanya spoke calmly, as she piloted the car up and over the main traffic lane. "An asari and a quarian were able to use their citizenship, taking the opportunity to join the Systems Alliance military. They now serve as officers alongside Major Shepard." She shrugged. "Among the asari, such a citizenship is highly prized. Asari have some difficulty moving in and out of human space without one, and many younger asari like to experiment."

Solana made a face. "That's a little...extreme, isn't it?"

Telanya snorted. "I'm not a big fan of some of the things my people do. I don't associate with them much, after some bad experiences in my youth." Her voice only had the slightest tremble in it, and Garrus took her free hand and squeezed it.

Regilus's eyes narrowed. "I suspect these experiences were part of why you joined C-SEC?"

She shrugged. "No disrespect, General, but it's not something I enjoy or wish to speak of. Let us just say that I think that, unlike turians, the asari people do not have their priorities in order."

Regilus was silent for a second before giving a rusty bark of laughter. "I like her capacity for barbed understatement, Garrus."

Garrus merely flicked a mandible as the air-car descended to land smoothly at the docking platform of the Carthaan Expevia, a turian hotel in the upper Kithoi Wards near the entrance to the Presidium. "Since our apartment isn't very big, I didn't think you wanted to crash on the couch, sire, so we got you the best hotel we could. It's only about two minutes from our apartment."

The air-car landed, doors swinging away even as two black-suited turian porters arrived, taking the bags out of the back. A third turian, his suit trimmed in dark green, bowed. "Welcome, General Vakarian. The Carthaan is delighted to be of service to your Family. Your suites are already prepared, please follow me."

Regilus shot Garrus a look before taking Mitisia's arm in his own and inclining his head to the greeter. "Of course."

Garrus and Telanya brought up the rear, the latter chatting quietly with Solana about the varied architecture of the Wards visible around them. "It's so...massive. How do you even find your way around?"

Tel smiled gently. "Most of the air-cars are built with integral navigation units, but as a member of C-SEC you get very familiar with areas you tend to patrol. I spent three years in Kithoi in the docks and working on smuggling cases before moving up to Financial Affairs."

They entered the lavish lobby, boots clicking on hard tile, as Regilus turned to her. "Hardly the usual path for a member of Special Response. Most start off in Interdiction or, like my son, Special Investigations – battle hardened types."

Telanya gave a small, almost mocking smile. "Yes, well. I think my survival during the Benezia Incident, including hot combat drops against Cerberus and geth, fighting Saren himself, not to mention helping Garrus stand off over seventy geth, were evidence enough that I can handle myself perfectly well in a fight."

Garrus' mother snickered. "Clawed."

The older turian shook his head in amusement. "Yes,well, that was rather pompous of me. What I was attempting to say was that usually Special Response is dominated by those who prefer using a gun to actually solving crimes. Your background should provide some interesting changes in focus."

Garrus almost puffed up with pride as they entered a lift. "It already has, sire. If not for her running down some of the customs alterations that bastard Saleon was up to, we'd have never identified his ship or pinned him down. Even before that, she was integral in helping Shepard with some of the investigations into Saren."

The older turian nodded. "I..." He paused. "I have not said this as I should, Garrus, but I am very proud of the way you have handled yourself in this entire distressing episode."

Garrus sighed. "Except for leaving C-SEC."

There was silence, and then Regilus shook his head. "No. I think, on reflection, you did exactly what had to be done. There is duty, always duty, and it does not bend for anything. But I was wrong in not seeing that you had to set your duty to the Law as higher than that of C-SEC, or even the Hierarchy."

"You could not in good conscious let Saren trample upon the honor of the Hierarchy, but your duty to C-SEC prevented you from stopping him. In any collision between duty to an organization and duty to the race, the latter should prevail...and I forgot myself, in my blindness. You made the correct choice."

Garrus looked at him, eyes wide, as he continued. "Saren was more than a criminal. He was the annihilation of honor, of duty, of sacrifice. Too many young turians in the colonies, with no strong guidance from Clan or Family, looked to him as a hero. He was not. He was a pragmatic and cold figure in his youth, growing bitter and hateful as time went on."

The lift opened out onto a large hallway, and they followed the silent turian guide down it. "More than anything else, though, Saren violated everything it meant to be turian."

Their guide muttered. "He betrayed the Principles." He then sighed."I apologize, General, for my – "

Regilus waved it away. "You are right, young talon. He defiled the Principles. He turned his back on the race, and plotted to place his own views and insights above everyone else. Even _batarians _are not that mad. The fact that you pursued him and were part of ending his threat is a mark of vast pride for the Family, Garrus. It will be entered on the Lists of Valor and sung by future generations. If you had merely obeyed duty to stay at C-SEC, who knows what would have happened?"

Regilus turned to the guide, who had been waiting patiently. "I presume this is our suite?"

The guide nodded and opened the door to a large, airy suite, done in curving lines of brushed dark steel set off with the faint gray-white wood of miorth trees. Large windows , curving triangles of darkened glass, were set into the far wall of the living space, giving a stunning view of the Wards and the darkness beyond.

Two large bedrooms and a palatial ablutions and bathing room branched off to the left, while a communal dining pad and mats filled an alcove to the right, along with a trough for gullet stones and silvery claw-picks on a tastefully arranged rack above. Woven rugs of vakar fur set off the center seating area, which dipped into a bowl-like shape around an electronic firepit , while haptic entertainment screens flickered against the nearest walls. Comfortable couches flanked the firepit, and a bar was set into the wall below the windows, stocked with turian drinks and snacks.

The guide crossed both arms downwards, a sign of submissive respect.. "Midpast meal is served in four hours, and we provide room service or formal dining in the Accav Room on the first floor. Our spirit house is of House Paya and is available on the fifth floor. If you have any requests, your room keycards can double as commlinks to our front desk." He handed Regilus a small stack of the cards, done in tasteful white and orange, and dipped his head again before departing.

After the door closed , Garrus's mother walked to the central seating area and sat down tiredly, leaning back into the cushions. "After all that flying about and jumping through relays, I'm not very hungry, so maybe room service with some light snacks would be best, dearheart."

Regilus nodded. "That's fine. Just remember if you get too fatigued, let me know. Solana, you wanted to do some shopping while we were here?"

The younger turian girl nodded, and Regilus chuckled as he handed her a credit chit. "Spoiled hatchling. Be back in two hours, no later. And do not – "

Solana huffed. "Do not embarrass the Family, do not blow your money, do not act in an undignified fashion, do not – " Her voice trailed off as she left out the front door, and after a long moment Garrus snickered.

Regilus glared at him, then glanced at Telanya. "I apologize for my children."

Telanya laughed, moving to sit across from Mitisia on the couch. "Garrus is often exasperating, but I still love him."

Garrus also sat, next to his mother, and his father remained standing, staring down. "Yes, well. I will not bite my words, young lady. I'm well aware of the fact Garrus probably loves you as well. He would not state his intention to handfast unless he was utterly certain. I have reservations about this, however. I had expected Garrus to, at some point, stop running all over creation with various young paramours, and to settle down back on Palaven with a … well, frankly, a turian female."

He sighed. "It is a sad fact that my brothers have no male children, and the last Vakarian male aside from Garrus, a cousin, is a dishonored fool, befouling himself with slavers in the Terminus. There are daughters, of course, and if they marry the Name will survive, but many will always trace the honor of a Family through the males. he name of this Family is ancient, and once numbered in the endless thousands, but our sacrifices to the Hierarchy over the years have weakened our numbers. I stand high in the ranks of our people, and I would like to think Garrus would one day as well. That will be difficult if he has no heirs to pass the Name to, and an asari mate."

He gave them both a grave look. "I am sorry to ask this,but your desire to be handfasted – have you truly thought this through, son? At what it will cost both you and the Family?"

Garrus was silent for a long moment before sighing. "I have. I have also considered what it would cost me if I did not do this, sire."

Regilus frowned, but Garrus clamped his mandibles close to his face before speaking, his voice quiet but firm. "I have not, I know, lived up to the Family dicta of '_Duty Ascendant, Sacrifice Without Regret_'. I was too hot-headed and too impatient to work well in the military, and I was naïve and stupid when it came to what I though justice should be about." He exhaled. "My judgment was flawed, many times,and I cannot say I expect you to believe I have learned discipline or judgment in a handful of weeks."

He lifted his gaze to his father. "But she is all that let me claw myself back from a brink I didn't even see, one where I did nothing but try to solve everything at gunpoint. She made me realize that duty is nothing if you don't have a reason to protect something. That sacrificing yourself has to be for more than words, or oaths, or a Name."

Regilus's voice was quiet. "Many in the Hierarchy would disagree with your words."

Garrus nodded. "Yes, they would. In that, however, I have not changed. I am not going to alter my own honor, or what I believe, or who I am to please them. I cannot merely fall in lockstep with the duty to ideas and words when there is also duty to something greater. There is duty to one's mate. Honor to those who saved your life. Sacrifice in the name of someone who has sacrificed so much more." He looked down again. "And you cannot imagine, in your most horrific dreams, how much Telanya has already sacrificed and suffered. I will not leave her alone to face that darkness."

His father folded his arms, his good eye gazing down at Garrus, stern and unyielding. "And if that flies in the face of what is best for the Family?"

Garrus smiled. "Then I follow the dicta. Duty Ascendant, to her. Sacrifice without regret, for her."

Telanya found herself shaking. The sheer desire and wish for his father's approval was pouring across their link, but Garrus was willing to throw it away – to throw his very chance at ascending the meritocracy away – if it came down to choosing between Family Vakarian and her. She looked up, catching Regilus's eye.

_All I do is make him bleed for me. _

She tried hard to keep her voice steady as she spoke. "General Regilus, I ask you to hear my words. Not long ago, I put Garrus into an intolerable situation. The Council of Matriarchs, the rulers of the asari people, asked me to perform a task. It was not a task I would have – could have – done, but it was the only reason I was allowed aboard the Normandy to fight by his side."

She swallowed. "In not trusting in Shepard, in concealing that task, I nearly got Garrus thrown off the ship. Shepard was furious with me, and with him for not telling her about my task. It nearly destroyed their friendship – it nearly endangered his life. I felt his misery as he had to make a choice – the duty he had to chasing Saren, to his friend Shepard, who had given him that chance – or his duty to his mate, to support her in all things."

Both Regilus and Mitisia winced, and Telanya continued. "I swore that I would never put him in that ugly position again … and yet, here I am, hurting him again. Making him choose between his desire to please his father – who he admires, and loves, and desperately wishes was proud of him – and me. Between his duty and his love for his family, and his duty and love to me."

She felt tears, and looked at Garrus. "Once again, I am willing to beg, if I must. Garrus lives and dies by the thought that you would just … approve of him. Be proud of him. He tears himself up that he isn't around to comfort his mother. He worries that he isn't worthy of his Name. I don't want to make him choose between you or me. It isn't fair to him, and …"

She shook her head, and wiped her eyes. "As on that day, I do not know how I can prove to you that I am worthy. I am not some asari noble, to enhance his prestige. I cannot give him a turian child. I ca – "

She broke off, as Regilus slowly raised a clawed hand, looking her in the eye. "There are those who would say that I should have chosen a stronger mate, rather than one who even in her youth was ill. That I should have chosen for durability, and to bring forth more children. That I had a duty to my Family that should have stood above love. Yet they are not courageous enough to say such to my face, for I would slay them where they stood."

He seemed to struggle with something internally before speaking. "I love my son. I am proud of him. If I have been remiss in saying that to him, it is because of failings on my part, not his. He has shown everyone what the meaning of sacrifice is, to hurl away his station, his hopes for promotion, to risk his mate, to stop a madman and his accomplice. When they showed me video of that horrible scene in the foyer, the two of you nearly dead, I wept and cursed, for my last words to my son were not that I loved him. I plead with the spirits to save his life."

Garrus' eyes were wide and she felt his roiling emotions, but his father was not done. "Turians are a hard people, Telanya, because to be anything else caused us suffering and death. But my son has proven his duty, his honor,and his sacrifice, in a way I cannot. So have you. If he has chosen you, then I will certainly not stop him, and those who say ill of his choice or of you can face my claws as if they insulted my mate."

He looked back at her. "But before you do this, you must understand it will cost him. He will _never_ ascend very far up the meritocracy. He will never be offered a command under the Primarch, or seat himself on the Autarch's Circle. There will be those who say that a son of one of the Founding Families should never do more than dabble with asari. They broke General Septimus from the ranks of the Primarchs to exile on the Citadel due to his extensive liaisons with the Consort, and they stripped Admiral Jahla of his rank and position for handfasting a member of the Thirty."

Garrus shook his head and sighed. "That just proves the Primacy Circle is nothing I ever want to be affiliated with."

Mitisia spoke, her voice soft. "Each of us is only given a little time, a few spans of life to find what we want from life, son. As your sire said, if you choose her, we will support you. She is a better mate than all too many of the soft-plated carrion circling the halls of the Spire, little more than spoiled fools in egg-heat and blind devotion to something they cannot understand." She smiled. "But he is also right. You do not wish to do this in haste, and regret it later, or it will poison your love."

Her voice was sad, and Regilus growled at her. "I regret nothing, Mitisia." His voice was harsh, but there was a note of defiance and attachment in it that made Telanya give a flickering smile.

He turned back to his son, who exhaled. "I'm already a bad turian, sire. I might as well be a complete failure." He looked up at his father.

With a sigh, Regilus Vakarian placed his forehead against his son's. "Foolish boy. I am always behind you. If I am stern, it is to protect you. I remember when you were hatched, fitting into the palm of my hand, nothing but wide eyes and tiny little hands gripping my collar. I wanted to shield you from the darkness of the galaxy, and instead I drove you away. But never doubt that I love you, son."

Garrus said nothing, merely holding his father's hands, and Mitisia stood, placing one hand on Garrus' shoulder, and one on Telanya's. "You'll have to forgive them, dear. Males of our species are in love with melodrama."

This time both Garrus and Regilus growled at her, and Telanya erupted into nervous relieved laughter.


	10. Chapter 10 : News and Nuptials

_**A/N:** Aethtya and Anderson this time. Tali is up next, I just needed to set some background up.  
_

_The pace of updates is not really slowing down, I am just also focusing on some other works, such as the Biotic Encyclopedia and the Cerberus Files. Arc I will be ending soon, and then after fluffage Arc II kicks off with more action and what turns into Bring Down the Sky. This is turning into a somewhat larger work than I originally envisioned, but that will only give me more room to move the story forward in my ME2 piece, rather than having to explain what happened in the past.  
_

_I have a couple of story recs. There's an awesome update to **Living an Indoctrinated Dream **by Aberron, as well as **A Job is a Job **by RED78910. And since this chapter touches on marriage, check out the absolutely hilarious **Daddy's Magic Sparkle Princess** by HugoCogs._

_As always, if you have questions about some of what is referenced here, leave a review or PM and I will answer as fast as I can. :)_

* * *

_'The fact that James Branson was a puppet didn't offend me, but his smug voice and that smarmy expression did. Honestly? Every time I had to listen to him I wanted to punch him in the mouth.'  
_

_\- Councilor Donnel Udina, ''Maybe Later' is Never the Right Answer'  
_

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_DOWNLOADING: Data feed, prime broadcast segment 112_

_Manifest dump 42235-core alpha, unclassified_

_This is an official Systems Alliance data capture dump, replication or rebroadcast is restricted._

_Transcript begins, identifiers J: al-Jilani U: Udina B: Branson_

_Keywords: Citadel, geth, Systems Alliance, Branson, Udina_

BEGIN:

"Westerlund news! All the news, fit or unfit to print, 24/7!"

J: Good afternoon. I'm **Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani**, Westerlund News Network. This is a special report, coming to you directly from the Citadel Tower. Today we are honored to interview Councilor Donnel Udina, humanity's first Citadel Councilor. Additionally on direct vid-com link, we have Rear Admiral James Branson, the Hero of Elysium and the new High Admiral of the Alliance Admiralty Board.

J: Thank you both very much for gracing us with your time today, since you both have undoubtedly busy schedules.

U: You are quite welcome, and as always I enjoy being able to convey the views of my office to the public.

B: [nods head politely] Delighted to be here.

J: First, let me congratulate you both on your elevation to your respective stations. I think everyone in the SA can rest a little easier knowing the Hero of Elysium is directing the actions of our military, and Councilor Udina's well-known ardor and refusal to be cowed by the Citadel Council will make him a fine champion of humanity's needs. I personally am glad that Mr. Udina is our representative, as he has admirably balanced human goals with diplomatic realities in the past, and is a frequent guest on this show.

J: [smiles thinly] However, there are those commentators who question your new roles. Many members of the Ministries and voters who aided in unseating the prior Coleman administration feel Mr. Udina is a holdout from that regime who will not be in harmony with their views, while many older military figures feel Rear Admiral Branson is not a good replacement for his father due to a lack of experience at his rank. How would you respond to these criticisms?

U: I'm surprised you like me, Ms. Al-Jilani. The lack of approval from members of our government is not shocking. They feel that they should have made the choice about who represents humanity. Yet they have proven – repeatedly – that they are very unfit to actually do such a thing.

J: A strong statement, but can you provide specifics?

U: Certainly! It is astounding we have not actually been censured by the Council based on the acts of the current Coleman administration, given the number of very large diplomatic gaffes they made in the assumption of their role. They deliberately delayed seating their members, forcing President Windsor to deal with the Summit on Noveria himself. The Minister of the Interior championed Cerberus as some kind of patriotic organization and has not apologized in light of the discovery of Cerberus' role in the deaths at Eden Prime or it's disgusting practices.

U: [Grimaces] After they took power, Baron Bekenstein offended the Asari by suggesting humanity had suffered more than others, mere hours after millions of asari died to Benezia's terror attacks. Lord Aldrien Manswell, the deputy director of the Ministry of State, was arrested for high treason after he illegally tried to detain Shepard from chasing after Benezia to stop her, an act that, had he succeeded, would have lead to her triumph. Bekenstein's quite public decision to try and prevent the Fifth Fleet from assisting with the Battle of the Citadel has also gone over very poorly.

U: [folds arms] The general impression that most alien governments have of the new Coleman administration is that it is short-sighted, bigoted, incompetent, and very close to hostile. The colonies of the SA probably are not reassured either, given that every member of the Cabinet is against military expenditure for even class II colonies. Frankly? Yes, I am not in lockstep with our government's positions, and that is a good thing. I will execute the requirements as placed upon me by the President and attempt to improve Humanity's standing, not encourage isolationism and a retreat from the galactic stage when we have sacrificed so much just to get here.

J: And thus you feel you are better suited to represent humanity at the table than the properly elected representative's choice?

U: Ms. Al-Jilani, I have a doctorate in xenolinguistics and xenopsychology. I've been involved in diplomatic efforts with non-humans since the First Contact War. I know the Citadel councilors both professionally and personally, and I have a wide array of contacts with other alien representatives. The man they chose to replace me was an apparatchik that did not even understand the nine basic forms of siari hand motion, or why staring at salarians is bad. Do you really think the Council will take humanity seriously, or give any credence to our requests and needs, if we send in people who think aliens are inferior to humans, and who have mouthed support for a terrorist organization?

J: That may be true, but it does dodge the question – should the Citadel Representative be chosen based on the wishes of the people of the SA?

U: That was never the case in the first place, and ignores the more important point. The current government is a shakily held coalition. If they are allowed to determine the course of humanity's interaction with the Citadel, it will result in a negative outcome. Given the amount of alien investment, technology agreements, trade concessions and relaxation of trade duties that the old Coleman administration was able to achieve by being at least polite, I fear the current administration will cost the Systems Alliance billions of credits, retard our growth, ignore our colonies and generally put humanity in a worse light.

J: I see. Rear Admiral Branson?

B: I am fully aware that I am not a 'senior' admiral. I was promoted to Captain around the time Shepard was tapped as a Spectre, and to Rear Admiral days before I was selected to lead the Admiralty Board. They actually offered me the position of Fleet Master, which I refused, because I did not feel I had the proper experience. The Board does not act in a vacuum. I not only have the advice of two other admirals of the Red, but the Senate Defense committee, the Minister of Defense, and of course the President.

B: [frowns] As to the question of my views and priorities, I am not so ready to accept criticisms. I don't want to attack my own father, but many policies pursued by the previous Admiralty were … questionable. If we are to cooperate militarily with any races, I would far prefer it to be the Quarians and Volus, or at least the Asari, rather than the turians. I think the ongoing quagmire and cold war with the Batarians is counterproductive, and frankly, I think we waste a great deal of money on trying to match the military capabilities of other races when our economy is simply not ready for that. I do plan to draw down military forces to some extent, because we are over-extended, over-worked, and most of all held to account for the defense of a volume of space a fleet twice our size couldn't guard properly. The continuing granting of colonization grants is not sustainable.

J: An interesting perspective. And your opinion on the Rear Admiral, Mr. Udina?

U: [Arches an eyebrow] I am not precisely grounded in the intricacies of military command architecture, Ms. Al-Jilani. I will say that the only reason Branson wasn't chosen as a Spectre was he was doing more good where he was, and because his path even then was to ascend to the Admiralty, not simply tote a gun around. I am confident that he will serve proudly, and that his ability to lead our military forces will be every bit as skilled as his father was. As to his stance on expansion and the role of the fleet, I cannot agree more. Catering to wildcat settlers who want protection without paying for it or contributing to the SA is a recipe for disaster.

J: [Smiles] Rear Admiral Branson, do you have an opinion on Mr. Udina's views?

B: That's a complex question, ma'am. As a rule, I will admit to distrusting the motives and long-term goals of many of our alien neighbors. Even our cousins the asari have their issues, as can be seen by millions of them literally fleeing to live in the SA. That being said, I am not opposed to civil cooperation with the Council and it's members, as long as we are going to get the benefits of such as the asari, turians, and salarians have. I disagree on some issues – Mr. Udina is a proponent of military integration with aliens, I am not, he is a strong advocate of increasing our trade with the volus, I disagree – but on the whole we are of like minds on many things. He will be a better servant to the needs of humanity, I feel, than someone driven by political motives – or worse, dislike of aliens.

J: Well … it's good that you two are in rough agreement then. Moving on, I'd like to continue by addressing a concern raised in calls and other media feedback by many of our viewers, namely that of the recent invasion by the geth. Their attack at Terra Nova left many thousands dead, not to mention smaller skirmishes at Feros, Noveria, and of course the evil committed at Eden Prime and the corporate world of Exogeni III. Many are wondering why the Systems Alliance fleets – or the Citadel Fleets – were not able to repel such attacks on human worlds, or even the alien capitals, where the damage was even worse.

U: I will let the High Admiral address the military aspects of your question, ma'am, since that is a military matter. I will say that the quarians have been warning us all for decades the geth were a threat, and they were ignored. Hopefully we won't repeat such foolishness in the future.

J: Admiral?

B: [leans back, stroking his chin] As to the effective nature of the fleets, ma'am, I will speak to that. The decision was made by the Citadel Council to not deploy large numbers of ships during the initial hunt for Saren and Benezia given that they were operating out of the Terminus Systems. The Citadel was worried about provoking the criminal warlord Aria. After the decimation of one of the Fleets by the geth dreadnaught at Feros, the Citadel Admiralty made the decision to not engage in direct combat without overwhelming numbers.

B: [smiles] The fleets – both theirs and ours – were deployed in a manner from which they hoped would minimize losses in case of a general geth invasion. Clearly mistakes were made in assessing the threat, but we had no real way to investigate the Perseus Veil or the strength of geth technology. That super-dreadnaught of theirs was a shock to everyone. The bottom line is that, as I mentioned earlier, we're spread too thin to actively defend it all.

J: How will this change in the near future, then? The geth threat is not over, after all. Do you think what remains of the Fleets can defend civilized space if the geth attack again?

B: It is difficult to say. The Citadel Fleet must be given credit for facing down and stopping the vast majority of the geth armada, but they lost a lot of ships doing so. Even with the quarians joining, they are weaker now than at any time in the past century. The geth fleet that attacked the Alliance tore Second Fleet in half, and severely damaged First and Fifth Fleets. That geth fleet was only a tenth of the force hurled at the capital planets of the Citadel Races and the Citadel itself, so we could have come off worse than we did. For now, the core of the human fleet will need to rebuild, and I think in the short term everyone will be investing into crash programs to both boost fleet numbers and fleet effectiveness.

J: I see. There have been several statements made by the Minister of State and many members of the public, stating that the Alliance has paid more than it's fair share of blood and that the sacrifice of our sailors in the Fifth Fleet was both unnecessary and the wrong move to to make. Do you feel this stance is valid, given that humanity did take the lead on bringing Saren and Benezia to justice?

U: The ability of certain political groups to take reality and alter it into fantasy has always fascinated me, Ms. Al-Jilani. Let us be clear, however. 'Humanity' did not in any way, shape or form take the 'lead' in stopping Saren and Benezia – Commander Shepard did. The Systems Alliance did not provide her with any level of support aside from a single frigate and three replacement Marines. In fact, the Minister of State's deputy attempted to stop Shepard from pursuing Benezia, an act that if had been allowed to stand might have ended in Benezia's victory.

U: [Leans forward, frowning] I won't make the obvious comment on the fact that the quarian Migrant Fleet made the same choice that Fifth Fleet did. Ignoring the plight of the Citadel Fleet may have saved human lives in the short run, but the message it would have sent would be disastrous in the long run, if we turned our back on not only the turians and salarians but our own asari allies.

J: Admiral Branson?

B: I can see the concerns being raised by some members of government – I often had such disagreements with my own father, when he held the post I hold now. And to a certain degree I agree – there is certainly an argument that could be made regarding the lack of support by the Citadel Council in support of Shepard. But the Alliance Military did not back her up either, so I feel this smacks far too much of political sophistry rather than honest assessment.

B: [sighs and straightens in chair] I disagreed and still disagree with the actions of Fifth Fleet, but for purely strategic reasons. Second Fleet was rendered incapable, and First Fleet was heavily damaged – by pulling Fifth Fleet out of our border defenses, any additional geth attacks could have ravaged core colonies. But I will not suggest that the actions of Fifth Fleet at the battle were some pointless sacrifice. Letting the Citadel Fleet be destroyed would not benefit humanity in the long run, and I wish to strongly state that my condolences and admiration are with _all _of the brave beings who died in that battle – human, asari, quarian, salarian, turian, and volus.

J: Before we move on, I'd like to address the statements made by the Earth First and Blue Stars No More parties. They issued a joint statement of censure, stating – and I quote – 'The people of Earth have lost enough lives in the defense not of our home, but of the Citadel and it's alien inhabitants. The criminal incompetence of those who sacrificed thousands of human lives to score political points rather than consider the needs of Mother Earth will not be forgotten. Our families, our taxes and our livelihoods should not be sacrificed for others.' Given the support polls show for their position, how do respond to such accusations?

U: [arches an eyebrow] I am sure the hundreds of thousands of humans on the Citadel appreciate the implied statement that their lives apparently don't matter. Ms. Al-Jilani, I will borrow a page from Commander Shepard's book and be rather blunt. I do not care what the majority of the citizens of Sol think about the recent events, based on the people they voted into office. Earth First never seems to have a problem when asari investors drop billions to assist with rebuilding the ecosystems, and given that the vast majority of taxes from the colonies don't go to improving the lives of colonists but rather to support Earth, the statement about taxes is completely hypocritical. Blue Stars No More seems to think if we cover our eyes and hide that threats won't find us. Their selfish grief over their own losses cheapens the sacrifice of their loved ones and frankly disgusts me.

U: [leans forward again] My response to their commentary is for them to open their eyes. Humanity is more than Sol, and the short-sighted focus of the Alliance towards Sol is the main reason why, in my opinion, the Fleet didn't have the forces to truly protect Eden Prime or Feros. My job as humanity's Councilor is to represent _humanity_, not the wishes of political parties. If my actions and positions irritate them, that merely means I am performing my task properly.

B: [smiles] While Councilor Udina is rather sharp with his tone and words, I will agree there is a sizable disconnect between what the civilian population sees as important and what the Alliance has to focus on. The loss of human life at the Battle of the Citadel was tragic, as is any loss of our brave servicemen and women. But I disagree sharply that it was mere political theater. The call was made by Commander Shepard, and the rationale she used for ordering the Fifth Fleet into combat was simple – a Council that owes humanity it's life is more likely to listen than one bitter that we let so many die. The Destiny Ascension not only had the Council aboard, but over four thousand crew and almost fifteen thousand highly influential civilian evacuees. Two of the daughters of the High Matriarch were aboard, as was most of the salarian Yaan noble family.

B: [Shrugs] If we had not acted, and let the Destiny Ascension be destroyed, not only would have defeating the geth be more difficult, but we would be facing the bitter recriminations of asari, turians and salarians. There would be a massive retrenchment of alien investment, and more than likely the other races would isolate humanity much as the batarians have been isolated. That would not have ended well for the Alliance, I fear.

J: I see. Given that we have been admitted to the Council, and that our sacrifices have at least won us admiration and goodwill, what role do you see the Alliance playing in the near future?

U: Our primary focus should be on rebuilding our own defenses and enacting tighter connections with the quarians. As much as it galls me to admit it, we are unlikely to see any immediate benefits on a political level from joining the Council. Taxes will go down, we will have a real say in the deployments of the Citadel Fleet, and certainly there will be far fewer restrictions on human corporations and on our military forces. At the same time, we must determine how our new status changes legal decisions and other aspects of the Alliance's current day to day operations, such as immigration, trade and colonization.

B: There also needs to be, if not a retraction, at least a stabilization of the Systems Alliance in terms of what we can and cannot defend and support militarily. I agree with Mr. Udina that change and improvement wont' come overnight, but we should not wait for the Council to help us with defending our colonies. I know this may sound cruel, but pulling back defense aside from static GARDIAN and GTS emplacements on outlying class I colonies and canceling any support, even emergency reaction forces, to those colonies who refuse to join the SA, has pretty much become a requirement. We simply no longer have the ships to support them.

U: Perhaps with time Council fleets, or even our quarian allies, can take up that burden, but I agree with the Rear Admiral.

J: That will not sit well with the people on the frontier.

U: And? I regret the ugly necessity of pulling back from class I colonies, but too many of them were founded against the direct recommendation of the Ministry of Development, and many are in arrears on their taxes and support of the SA. Wildcat colonies don't even bother to pretend to be a part of the SA, yet scream that our servicemen should die to protect them? There is no free lunch. If colonies want the benefits of the SA then they have to abide by it's restrictions, taxes, and laws. If they do not wish to do that, why exactly should the SA be obligated to assist them?

J: The fact that they are human does not sway you?

U: It does not. We have limited funds, limited facilities, and limited forces. The whole reason people died at Terra Nova – a full class III member of the SA – is that we diluted our defenses trying to protect far-flung colonies who don't even cooperate with the SA. In appeasing those who contribute nothing, we sacrificed the lives of those who paid their taxes, sent off their children to war, and supported the SA in the line of fire. Tell the wildcatters to explain to the people mourning loved ones on Terra Nova why they had to pay the price for frontier intransigence.

J: A few last items. Admiral, what is your take on the promotion of humanity's first Spectre to Major and her command of a highly secretive task force?

B: I can't really comment on that, ma'am. I'll stay that Major Shepard is tasked with certain high level tasks that would require someone with Spectre authority, and that her orders are issued from the highest levels of authority.

J: Rumor also states that the Alliance is looking to select an additional Spectre candidate. Can you speak to this issue?

B: [laughs] I can tell you it's not me!

U: I believe we are still in the negotiations phase of such discussions with the Council – not even at a place yet where possible candidates would be suggested, much less reviewed. I will say that a second Spectre candidate would have to display several of the same attributes as Shepard – open-minded attitude to aliens, a lack of political attachment, no major command status, and most likely a Marine officer with Naval service rather than a pure Naval officer. But decisions are still months off, if not longer.

J: Finally, there is a great deal of gossip and speculation around what the real goals of Benezia and Saren were. The Council has declined to comment, and Major Shepard's Commissariat detail denied our interviewers a chance to speak with her. Could you shed light on this?

B: [glances at Udina, who shakes his head slightly] I can only give certain information out at this time, ma'am. Investigations are still ongoing, as there might be as many as several hundred turian and possibly several thousand asari Triune forces with loyalty to Saren and Benezia still at large. We can confirm that the two of them were in rebellion against the current governance of the entire galaxy. The geth assaults on capital systems of major races was designed to kill rulers and destroy central governments while the strike at the Citadel would have decapitated Citadel governance and placed the Citadel's key relay controls into their hands.

B: [sighs] It is clear that Saren and Benezia planned to remake the state of the galaxy and who was in charge Saren's involvement with Cerberus is also still under investigation, and whatever they planned was probably not going to end well for anyone.

U: Some sources in our investigation indicate both Saren and Benezia were likely … unbalanced. Saren was a turian biotic, who are often segregated and isolated from turian society. Despite how much honor he accrued and his high place in turian hearts, the loss of his partner made him withdraw from society even more, which can lead to mental problems for turians. Likewise, Benezia went through an extremely ugly divorce, and both her Triune Movement and her business dealings were racked with scandal and investigation, which was very shaming and stressful. Her closer friends reported that she had also withdrawn from society in recent years.

B: We're still putting together facts, obviously. But Saren was frustrated and angry at the Turian Hierarchy's economic troubles, the damage caused by volus independence movements, and the loss of honor from the forced end of the First Contact War. Benezia, likewise, was not pleased with the social troubles caused by the asari movement that has caused so many asari to turn their backs on the Thirty and to join the SA. She was equally distressed by harsh criticism of the goals of the Triune Unity movement and the fact that some sort of scandal involving the Church of Athame involving one Matriarch Trellani was laid at her feet.

J: It is saddening and frustrating – as well as frightening – that two such noble figures would fall to darkness. I was an intern when Lady Benezia visited Earth in the 2160's, and her grace and beauty enchanted all of humanity. For her to turn against us has made some question the safety of relying so much on the asari-human bond of kinship.

U: [exhales] That, Ms. Al-Jilani, is something that I think will need some reevaluation as the Alliance moves forward. I admire the asari and I believe they have done a great deal to help humanity, at great financial and political cost. But the recent spike in asari immigration is becoming a flood, and it does not speak well to our future relationship if the Thirty keep asking us to curtail or even stop asari immigrants while encouraging human immigration to the Republic. Certain questions also need to be asked in regards to some events involving Saren's dreadnaught, which for now we believe to be a Prothean or possibly Inusannon vessel that the asari may have had some information on they withheld from us.

J: Any words on this, Admiral?

B: I don't want to come off sounding like either a bigot or ungrateful. I am in personal debt to the asari, as one of their commandos saved my life not too long ago, and certainly they've done a great deal to improve the condition of Earth's ecosphere and shielding our economy from unfair competition. That being said, we cannot afford to become too dependent on Big Sister. It isn't a matter of that they are aliens. As they have pointed out, they are so very nearly human that the differences really are trivial. The problem is that humanity cannot grow if it is dependent on others, and we have no wish to be puppets like the drell are to the hanar, nor dominated as the volus are by the turians.

J: Well said. I'm afraid that is all the time we have tonight, but we look forward to seeing both of you in action, protecting humanity's interests and showing our place on the Council is deserved. Thank you both for your contributions and service.

B: I am but a servant of humanity, ma'am. Good night.

U: If anyone deserves thanks, it should be Shepard. Thank you for allowing us to air our own views.

O-ATTWN-O

Aethyta gazed out over the serenity of the Presidium from the aircar as it ascended towards the Silversun Strip, tugging irritably at the collar of her dress as she shifted in her seat. The past few weeks had been spent in intense regeneration therapy and reconstructive surgery for the biotic burns she had suffered at the hands of Benezia, and she'd only been discharged two days ago. She was still getting used to moving around after fifteen days in traction.

She scratched her shoulder absently, then sighed. Damned itching.

She should have worn a different dress. But most of her usual dresses were a little skanky to be worn in a meet with your daughter's father. Couldn't send the wrong message, hell. Humans tended to see asari as sex-addicted sluts half the time anyway, no need to reinforce the stereotype. That meant wearing a long, ankle length matriarchal gown, complete with the stupid shawl of the Vasir and a goddess-damned sash of her rank as a blademistress.

The human wouldn't even get the message her outfit gave, but it was better than sending a different message with a low-cut mini showing cleavage and azure. She just wished the thing was a little looser, the fabric rubbing her skin made it itch constantly.

A smirk crossed her lips. The other shore of that particular sea was that the dress was a bit tight for a reason. Since her breasts had literally been burned off, she'd gotten the surgeons to rebuild her breasts the size she always wanted. They had frankly begun to sag a little, and that was never going to be something she put up with. She even took the opportunity to have the nipples augmented with mithsa-skin from her azure. She'd always wanted to do that but never had the cash.

She'd have to thank Tevos for picking up the medical bill. Not directly, of course. Tevos was too stiff and concerned with her own image to be open to the kind of repayment Aethyta was good at. Still, she could give Lidanya some tips, since it was clear the two were an item. Liddy was a sweet girl, but still clanless trash, and probably didn't know how to _really _get Tevos screaming in the sack.

She laughed a little at that thought, then scratched herself again. She had to give the Asari Councilor credit for having the smarts to do an end-run around that catty little Te'Shora bitch. Doing it with yet another adoptee to one of the High Houses sent it's own message in asari culture. If Tevos T'Sael could become Tevos Te'Armal, poor Irrissa could kiss her own chances at being Councilor goodbye.

She idly scratched her stomach, then frowned. Maybe lotion would have helped, she should have bought some earlier.

The aircar began to descend, tucking itself into the Strip's closed in environs. Unlike the rest of the Presidium, the Strip was a long wide shelf cut lengthwise down the curve of the Presidium, closed off from the main torus. It had become the place for the less opulent and more gaudy attractions on the Citadel to cluster, away from the white-lit elegance of the main Presidium. Arenas, gambling houses, hotels catering to privacy, and of course the homes of the less reputable could all be found there.

She wondered why the hell an Alliance captain would make his home here, aside from the privacy, then grunted. She never could figure out humans. Good in bed, looked almost exactly like an asari which meant the juices got flowing faster, and more gentle and emotional than turians. Hilarious when drunk, and creative when it came to drinks. Also kinkier and nastier than any other alien, the shit they got up to in their porn made _Vaenia_ look like elcor mating rituals with those big wooden pole things.

Still, they were too weird and confusing to really get a grip on. Humans seemed to delight in being different and unpredictable, then wondering why everyone was nervous around them. She would have to keep that in mind when it came time to talk to Shepard's father figure.

The aircar landed, and she stepped out, heels clicking sharply on the faux-stone floor of the landing area, smoothing her black and silver dress and checking the fit of her neural brace disguised as an elegant bracelet on her left arm. She adjusted her shawl, scowling at the stupid thing, and then flexed her ankle. She had a monofilament knife in a skin-tight sheath in her boot, and wanted to feel that it was still in place.

She wouldn't need it – goddess, she hoped she wasn't that fucking stupid that she would have to knife Shepard's father – but she didn't get to be eleven hundred damned years old by going unarmed anywhere.

Walking towards the address given to her, she paused as a ground transport wheeled by, taking in the flowing crowds of turians, asari, salarians, volus and humans. A striking asari in a flat-black gown that cut off at the thigh turned to face her, and for a moment she looked like Benezia, elegant gaze and cool amusement in her eyes.

Then the moment passed as the asari faced away, just another good looking matron. Aethyta winced, tightening her lips and moving past the other asari.

Every night since she'd watched Nezzy burn herself to death, her mind had been at war with itself, with images of their lives together and of the long nights spent in each others arms. Benezia had been her first real friend, her first rival, her first lover, and perhaps the most important person in her life. She'd never gotten over their separation, always trying to tell herself that in another few decades she'd take a stab at making things work again.

Too many drinks, too much disappointment and too much isolation had made such wishes merely talk. The years of shame and rebuke she'd endured, taking on all the blame for mistakes both she and Nezzy had made, had driven her to flee most of her older friends. Her disciples turned away from her, her family pretended she didn't exist, and even those who held beliefs similar to her sneered and ignored her plight.

She'd heard the snide comments, of course. The whispers that Benezia had been a little too tightly wound around Aethyta's fingers, that the fortunes of T'Soni and Vasir had slumped because their matriarchs spent all their time fucking and none of it leading. The ugly smiles that took pleasure in seeing the Black Blade of the Vasir humbled, paying her back for centuries of running her sharp tongue over the failings of asari culture. Most of all, the sneering dismissal when her beliefs in a more militant stance had been discredited by a few stupid maidens bringing shame to her House and her teachings.

She'd let the cutting remarks and the cruel laughs drive her away. She did it trying to protect Benezia, trying to not ruin her bondmate's life – but in doing so she had clearly had destroyed _Benezia _as well as herself.

She'd drowned herself in drink, trying to forget Benezia's laugh, her touch, her smile. She'd lost herself in lovers hoping to blot out the feel of Benezia's body, the warmth of her bond. She'd turned bitter and hostile to all, and had let the chances to reunite with her lover – not to mention Liara – slip away. Hurt and upset at the fact that Benezia had never chased her or tried to find her, she let despair dissuade her from trying to make amends herself.

She was terrified she would go to Benezia, and be turned away. And that fear had led her to the ugly day on the Citadel, crossing swords with the only person she'd ever loved.

Fighting Nezzy, seeing her soul underneath whatever foul corruption had been shoved into her body, had hurt like nothing else. Even trying to kill each other they'd bantered, as if they were merely arguing. Neither one had wanted that fight, and neither had wanted to really kill the other.

When Benezia had died in the glory of the light, and Aethyta been left alive and alone, the ugly truth hit her at last.

Never again would she taste those lips, or see her in soft yellows, laughing at the sun. Never again would she see that cunning smile, or grin as Benezia turned foes into friends with her gentle wisdom. Never again would she hold her and ignore the galaxy around her.

Benezia was gone, because Aethyta was too fucking _weak_ and _scared_ to stop her from falling.

She hurt, in a way that no amount of drinking, or screwing, or hiding would ever stop. Benezia was her soul, her balance. She was the courtesy to Aethyta's crassness, the sympathy to her tough love, the elegance to her coarse nature. They fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, so natural and right that without her she'd felt unbalanced.

She glanced ahead,seeing the tower she was headed for. A bitter smile crossed her lips as she saw a haptic advertisement for a performance of the Atherion using human music. Nezzy would have loved something like that.

She exhaled, and kept walking. That was all that was left to her now, enduring through the pain.

She'd endured when she found out that Nezzy had bonded with some turian freak, even when that had cut her almost more than she could take. She'd endured when she watched her daughter's name be mocked and belittled, hoping against hope that Liara's spirit would survive the cruelty of asari disdain. She'd endured when the most talented of her students, Samara, had warned her of the machinations against Liara – that the Thirty had instructed the Justicar Order to eliminate Liara, fearing that Benezia had poisoned her mind as she had done to Matriarch Trellani.

She'd come close to giving into despair when Liara had gone silent on Therum, followed by the news the planet had been attacked by geth. She'd sat in her bar on Ilium, a collection of four full-strength bottles of ryncol in front of her, enough to shred her insides to the point where she would bleed to death in a stupor.

But she didn't drink them. She was too hard to give up, too bitter, too goddess-damned bitchy. And she'd endured all of the pain she had, of having to fight her own bondmate, of watching Nezzy die, of living on without the other half of her soul, for one reason only.

Her daughter.

She had nearly cried seeing Liara there at the end, watching her rage flow as she defended her bondmate Shepard, watching her fight and try to kill her own mother. Had lost it and sobbed when she had to see Benezia show her strength one final time, overcoming what had to be agony to deny Nazara it's last wish.

Aethyta didn't know much about the Reaper, but she liked to think Benezia's dying had fucked it over somehow, had contributed to the thing being blown to shreds.

She hoped the damned thing died in agony.

She reached the tower, entering into the lobby and glancing around at the green-tinted marble floor and cool green glass windows. Definitely classy stuff.

She walked to the elevator, forcing her emotions to sit still and behave. She couldn't afford to start weeping like a silly maiden. She had to be strong. To be there for Liara, to shield her from the bullshit the Matriarchy would pull, the plots and plans of bitter old azures too busy looking backwards to see the tsunami about to crush them.

The elevator opened, and she got in, hitting the button to take her to the appropriate level. She was a little nervous about meeting this Captain Anderson, unsure of the proprieties of doing so.

She snorted. She probably couldn't even spell proprieties correctly, much less not fuck it up. She could only be herself, direct, truthful and blunt, and hope to the Goddess she didn't mess this up too badly.

The elevator hissed open, and she walked as calmly as she could to the heavy doorway at the end of the hall, tapping the small haptic panel to one side.

It took half a minute for a voice to answer. "Yes?" A heavy, dark voice, full of authority and old wounds, wisdom and steel. A good voice, she thought.

"Matriarch Aethyta Vasir. Here to see Captain David Anderson."

A moment later the door opened, revealing a broad-shouldered and dark-skinned human male. He was dressed conservatively – thick black slacks, a white shirt under a soft, loose leather jacket, and black shoes of some soft material. "I was just getting ready to call you. Come in, please."

She stepped inside, glancing around, taking in the subtle hints of asari and turian design along with the more human aspects, like the barbaric fire burning in the middle of the room, or the collection of guns on one wall. "Nice place."

He nodded, his eyes focused on her face instead of her tits. She wasn't sure if that was polite or insulting, but decided to go with polite for now. Anderson was a bit too rugged and weathered for her tastes. On the rare occasions she'd dabbled in humans, she preferred the women, or at least the prettier and more slender men.

He shrugged, turning away. "I can't take credit for it. Kahlee, my … long-term partner, I guess, is responsible for the décor. I did add one thing onto her design though. Follow me."

Anderson said nothing else as he led her to the back of the apartment, a small room that she saw after entering was a bar, with a good six foot long floor-to-ceiling collection of some of the best booze and liquor in the galaxy neatly arranged on its shelving.

Her lips quirked before she broke down and laughed. "You have a bar in your apartment?"

He gave her a thin smile of his own. "When you are forced to deal with the shit I have to, madame, it saves me the trouble of driving down to the package store every day. Can I interest you in a drink?"

Well, he certainly knew how to make her feel right at home. She relaxed a little. Maybe this wouldn't be terribly awkward after all.

He poured himself a glass of an amber fluid he called scotch, and her a tall snifter of real Armali firewine. "Shepard picked that up the last time she was on Thessia...at the funeral of Benezia. Never had a taste for the stuff myself, too spicy." He set her drink in front of her, rounding the bar to sit down in a battered chair to one side of the room.

She sat on the curious elevated stools in front of the bar and drank deeply, smiling as the fire of the drink raced through her limbs. "I thought human males liked hot things."

He gave her a long look then laughed, a clean and honest laugh. "Shepard said you were interesting to talk to."

She snorted. "Come on. I've talked to her myself. She wouldn't be that diplomatic if you gave her a parliamentary manual and told her to read it verbatim. I can guess what she said about me."

Anderson eased down in a seat across from the bar, his back to the broad windows, and sipped his own drink. "It _was_ complementary … well, for Shepard, that is. Besides, I trained Shepard for some time. If I can put up with her mouth, I can deal with anything coming out of yours, Matriarch."

She smiled. "Aethyta, please. 'Matriarch' just reminds me I'm damned old." She sipped her own drink. "Your call was pretty unclear on what you needed to talk to me about, but I figure that we need to have a crest-to-crest chat anyway, given that our girls are bonded."

Anderson nodded. "I have questions about that, and a few other things. And I need to clarify something." He set his drink aside, a troubled look on his face.

"You do know Sara is not my biological child, correct?" His voice held an odd note, and she shrugged.

"One thing I did during my recovery was link with Liara. I saw through her Shepard's 'parents'. And what they did. If anyone has a claim to be her father, Anderson, it's you, not them." She took a deep drink, and he nodded, a sad expression morphing his already somber features.

When he spoke, his voice was laced with regret and pride both. "Sara is like a daughter to me. She and I met in some rough circumstances, but she's saved my life more than once. She's looked up to me all her adult life,and I have tried very hard to be the guidance she needs. I'm … honored, and more than a little overwhelmed, that she sees me as a father."

His jaw tightened. "That bothers me a lot, because I'm afraid I haven't done a good job of it so far. That is going to change. I've been too accepting of the abuse our government and certain parties have put her through, and I'm not going to put up with that sort of thing anymore."

He glanced back up at her. "I say this because no matter how much I wish differently, a lot of people are going to have problems with this marriage. A lot of people are going to say some pretty hurtful things. I may not always be there when I need to be, given that I have responsibilities of my own. I need to know I can count on you to be there to help her if I'm not."

Aethyta snorted. "I'm not going to vanish again, if that's what you're asking. I'm not real sure what good I can do Shepard, but I can listen, you get good at listening when you run a bar. I couldn't give two fishbits over what some stupid bastard on Earth thinks about my girl and her choice of bondmate, and that goes double for that pack of bitches on Thessia sucking on the T'Armal's tits."

She leaned her back against the bar, eyes narrowing. "I'm more concerned, I have to admit, about what you said about her being abused, and you not stepping up to stop it. I don't know a lot about human culture. Lots of it is confusing, and the rest is like a bad turian drama. I know Shepard has a pretty brutal rep, but like I said, I linked to my daughter's mind, and thus saw at least a few of Shepard's memories, through the link."

She drained her glass. "You'll pardon me for saying your people are completely full of shit when it comes to complaining about turian brutality, given what she went through. She survived things that would have made a Blood Pack slaver curl up and die. I know a lot of it happened before you were a part of her life, and that can't be held against you."

She put her glass down and gave him a hard glance. "But some of it came after. I can't really be happy with you telling me that you could have stopped some of that shit and didn't, and I worry you might let it happen again if you get too caught up in these 'responsibilities' you speak of."

Anderson flinched and looked away. "You're right, madame. As I said, I'm not happy at what I've let happen. I was not seeing the whole picture with what Sara went through for a long time. She has always been exceptional, and for a long time I thought encouraging her to move on and believe in herself would change things. I didn't know or understand everything she'd been through until after I reached my current rank and got full access to certain records. When I did find out, I wanted to throw up. And the very first thing I did when I had the chance and authority was to get her tapped for the Spectre program and put under my direct command."

He picked up his drink again. "I wanted to have a chance to work with Sara, see if I could fix some of what had been done to her by being there for her. I wanted to show her there was a different way to live. Maybe I could have reached her, but Saren and his attack on Eden Prime scotched that plan. I was removed from the Normandy, and Shepard had no one to confide in or to trust. If Liara hadn't come along ..."

Aethyta sighed. "Yeah. Your kid would be dead and probably mine too. Look, we all make fuckups. The important thing is that you don't do it again. Shepard deserves better than for people to ignore the problems she has, and you are someone she looks up to. If you aren't happy about how shit went down in the past, then take the chance to get it right in the future." She examined her empty glass, scowling at it. "Doubting your ability to be a father figure to her is not going to help her. Suck it up and do better."

He nodded, and she walked behind the bar, examining the bottles on it's small shelves and pulling down a bottle of turian brandy in racemic chirality. She poured, a bitter smile on her own features. "And don't beat yourself up too much, Anderson. I'm pretty sure the Worst Dad in the Galaxy award is going to be awarded to me, considering I dartfished out on Liara when she was just a baby, and then spent a century watching her go completely to the abyss and doing nothing to stop it."

She lifted her glass, drinking deeply before slamming it down. "And like Shepard, Liara has people in my government who don't care for her much. I didn't stop them any more than you stopped the ones going after Shepard, and I can't even plead ignorance. Just .. despair." She looked up at him. "So the thing about being there goes both ways. My daughter is so much smarter and more refined, more … innocent than I am. She may need someone to talk to that doesn't remind her of how she was abandoned all her life. And she sees you as someone she can trust."

Anderson exhaled. "Despair is an ugly burden to carry, Aethyta. It wore at me after the First Contact War, watching my home blasted to ruins and burying most of my family. It happened again after my experiences with Saren nearly ruined my career. I drank too much. Didn't focus on the things I should have." He shook his head. "As you told me – the mistakes of the past are just that – in the past. Learn from them and move on, that's all we can do. If I can ever help Liara out in any way, I will. She deserves that much."

He sighed. "As for the marriage, I am more than a little unprepared for all the things we'll have to get done to make it go off without a hitch."

He turned to face her more fully. "First of all, the timing is going to be a little ugly. They're going to get married when they get back to Arcturus. The media will have a damned field day with it, especially since the SA rarely if ever allows such liaisons between command officers and asari, and there's nothing going on in the news to distract them."

Aethyta scowled, then shrugged. "Then why rush it and have it now? I'm all for a good party, but if it's going to stir up shit, why not just wait a while?"

Anderson sighed."Because we may not have a while. Sooner or later, someone is going to figure out they're together, and that will be a scandal. Plus, the marriage is it's own goal. By tying them together, we can protect both Sara and Liara. In Sara's case, it legitimizes her elevation to the nobility. No one can mutter too loudly about the T'Soni not being good enough. And for Liara, it takes her out of the grasp of your Justicar Order."

Aethyta nodded. "Shepard mentioned that. The Justicars aren't going to move on this quickly...as least quickly in human terms, but I hadn't considered the human reaction. In that case, you're right, it's smarter to just get it out of the way."

She paused, then grinned. "I can't wait to see the look on that evil bitch Layana's face when she realizes the Justicars can't go against Liara. I'm half tempted to go to the Hall of the Justicars and stick my tongue out at them."

Anderson burst into laughter at this mental image, before coughing and shaking his head. "Definitely interesting to talk to. Kahlee has been bugging me about how the ceremony would actually be conducted, and I know nothing about asari … handfasting, is it?"

Aethyta nodded. "Yeah. Handfasting is a solemn occasion, very dignified, although there's usually a party afterward that's anything but. It's pretty simple, really. We take a pair of cords from the guts of a fish on Thessia. They are dyed to match … well, color symbolism is a mess. It's based on a lot of things, and we can cover that later. We tie them together, for a full day. Each partner has to figure out how compensate for the loss of one hand by drawing on the bond to aid the other."

She slid back the sleeve of her dress, displaying a slender cord of blue and green, encased in a thin hammered golden band. "It gets cut and turned to a bracelet after a day. Then you get drunk, there's a big orgy for the unhandfasted types, and the two lovers spend the night firming up their bond by sharing memories and facing their fears together."

She refilled her glass. "I can't say I've studied or even seen human weddings."

Anderson smiled. "They tend towards the formal as well. There's music, a procession where the, ah, bride is handed off to the groom after being escorted. There's symbolistic fertility rituals, such as thrown rice, and then a religious figure speaks a set of oaths both agree to, before exchanging rings and kissing." He coughed. "Usually we have parties too, but ah the married couple spend the night consummating the marriage."

Aethyta queried her omnitool, then barked laughter. "That's a fancy word you people got for fucking."

Anderson shook his head ruefully. "I have done some quick research – most human-asari unions blend the two traditions quite a bit. The handfasting pat of the asari ritual is combined with the human musical overtones and processional, whereas the religious aspects are really up in the air. Siari is pretty neutral..."

Aethyta laughed. "Liara isn't a siarist. She may not be a fanatic, but no member of the Thirty is anything but a pure Athameist. Oh, we'll borrow the fancy words and the hand signs, but you can't exactly preach 'all is one' when you're bigger, taller and smarter than commoners. The religious stuff can be a mix of the two, or whatever you think will go over with the humans best – the Thirty won't be offended, since only we are good enough to worship Athame."

She rolled her eyes at this, then pulled out her datapad. "For a handfasting of one of the Thirty, it would be impolite for the current House Matriarch not to be invited. That's Matriarch Suliasa. Since Liara pretty much put her in power, she'll play along. Usually other allied Houses are invited, but few are likely to accept due to a lot of factors, but the closest allies of the House – Vasir, Vael, and Vakas – will send _someone. _For a big name handfasting, sometimes the High Solarch will do the works herself. Might drop her a line."

Anderson arched an eyebrow. "Human weddings aren't much different, except there are no hard and fast rules about who to invite. We don't need to invite big names, although a few such as von Grath would probably demand to appear. Invitations are sent out and confirmations returned. There's usually a meal served after the ritual is completed, possibly dancing." He paused. "Might want to skip that last. Shepard isn't much on the dance floor."

They spent some time going over the specifics – when and who to invite, where to hold it, clothing considerations – before Aethyta felt comfortable enough with Anderson to ask the real question.

"Are you okay with this, with them bonding and marrying?"

Anderson gave her thoughtful look before nodding. "Sara has gone through a lot, and she has baggage. But she wont' just drag Liara down with her. She has something to protect, to look forward to, and I believe she will fight hard to stay with Liara and enjoy her new life. "

Aethyta nodded. "I worry because Liara is so young. For an asari to bond as a maiden is rare and often risky. If they were living lives of safety I wouldn't be that worried, but your girl and mine are going to dangerous places."

Anderson frowned. "I'm not familiar with the details of the asari bond. You say it's risky – in what way?"

Aethyta sighed. Asari educated their young about the sexual habits and needs of other races, why didn't humans? "Simply put, the bond is not just a meld like most asari have when they bang someone. It's a connection on a deep level, and if one of them dies, it could kill the other one or drive them crazy. It could cause them to have mental issues if they go too far with it, forgetting who they are and mixing up memories. It could change their personalities over time, or make them break down."

Aethyta drank. "Depends on how strong Liara is, and how strong Shepard's mind and will are."

Anderson gave a smile at that. "Sara is one of the strongest willed people I know of, Aethyta. And she doesn't usually just leap into things. She'll be careful."

Aethyta ran a finger along Anderson's bar, falling into her own thoughts.

There was little she could do in any case. The link with Liara had been hasty, more a cursory summation than a detailed look at what etched itself in her daughter's mind. What she had seen of Shepard was fragmented, nightmarish and broken, slathered in Liara's own emotional views and an almost frightening level of devotion.

Liara was not skilled at handling or manipulating a bond, and it was a little late for Aethyta to be teaching her, but she'd have to try. There was a lot of bond imprinting going on between her and Shepard. Most asari saw that as dangerous, but Aethyta was more pragmatic. The ugly truth was the imprinting had probably been what kept the two of them sane.

Her daughter's self-esteem had been shattered, and her life up to the point she joined Shepard's crew frankly miserable. Shepard had been broken over and over, too stuck in her own pain to ever just get up and move on with her life. The changes they wrought on each other were jarring, but probably necessary. The ramifications of their bond – the imprinting, the resonance, the spooky way they were already mirroring each others gestures – was not a good sign, but maybe if she helped Liara with understanding the bond it would repair some of that.

Problem was, Aethyta wasn't that hot at bonding either. Most of the time she just did shallow melds to enjoy the sex better. Her bond with Benezia had been effortless, since they were so perfect for each other, but Benezia was a master at controlling the bond and Aethyta had just gone along for the ride.

There were, of course, asari bond-seers and bond-readers, those who trained asari to enhance, repair or control bond linkages between bondmates. But Liara knew things about Shepard too sensitive to trust to any asari bond reader.

She broke the silence in the room by grunting, then she gave a brief shake of her head, running her hand over her crest and wondering at what point during the drinking and talking the itching had finally stopped. "I hope she's careful, Anderson. They've both suffered a lot. I want Liara to have a chance to be happy and enjoy life, but I may have to work with her to make sure she doesn't get carried away."

Anderson poured himself another scotch. "If it helps, I'll talk to Sara. Wouldn't hurt for me to read up some more on bonding."

He sipped his drink. "As far as enjoying themselves... I want them both to have a little time to themselves. The Kazan will have to undergo some final security fittings once they get back, and I'm trying to get the crew – and Shepard and Liara – a couple of weeks of leave before they head out, since they are going through some hard training right now. Scheduling the ceremony at the start of their leave period would be best, give them some time to have what we humans call a honeymoon."

Aethyta pondered on this. "So about two weeks from now? That should give me enough time to get the invites to the asari in question – such things have to be done in person, by the parents of the maiden. I'll leave human and other races invites up to you."

Anderson smiled. "I can do that. I'm sure Officer Vakarian would want to attend, along with Wrex, assuming he's still around."

He laughed. "I've never planned a wedding before, but if I'm expected to manage fleets and ships, I expect we'll get it sorted out. I can handle most of the human invites, putting together an honor guard, get the food catered and arrange the venue if you can handle the rest – figuring out what the asari coming will want to eat, finding an Athameist priestess who won't mind working with a human cleric, and things like the music and the party afterward."

Aethyta nodded but shrugged. "I'll go ahead and get the cords we'll need for the handfasting, and figure out the color matches. But are you sure you want me handling the party? Like I said handfastings start off boring, but the party after tends to devolve into what you humans would call an orgy, and if the media are going to be all over it, that might not go well."

Anderson shook his head. "It will be a private venue,and if I can get her Commissar to play along, not open to the public at all." He shook his head again, more ruefully. "And given the way more than Sara and Liara hooked up on the Normandy, I wouldn't be shocked if certain improprieties happened anyway."

Aethyta laughed, then stood slowly, draining the last of her drink and setting the glass down gently on the bar. "In that case, I should probably get moving. It will take me a week to get to Thessia and back, and then I have to figure out what kind of spread to set. I assume you have the credits to pay for all this?"

Anderson nodded. "I do. I can't think of anything better to spend it on than marrying off my child."


	11. Chapter 11 : Refits and Resolutions

_**A/N:** So...Tali. This chapter started out as an awkward interspecies romance thing, turned into a discourse on SA military logistics and the technology of the Chiron BG, morphed at some point into a sob story for a while, and ended up as this. I wrote and rewrote this chapter a lot. Progman had a significant influence on the outcome. So, if you like it, I'm awesome, if not, blame him. :P _

_(Kidding.)  
_

_I've said my piece about how dissapointed and irritated I am with how Bioware depicts Tali on my blog. Tali is one of the core characters in this work, and I do hope she comes off in a good light rather than a walking cultural infodump with a shotgun. There's some infodump here, but I try to make it integral to what is going on, not utterly tangental to the point people joke _about it in later games. I am interested in what people think on my interpretation of Tali, so please let me know in review or PM, if only so I can tweak it._  
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_The quarian terms used later in the story were borrowed and adapted from the **Startling Revelations** quarian dictionary, and are explained at the end of the chapter. _

_Only one recommendation today, a weird one but excellent : ****Phoenix Resurgent**** by Vyrexuviel. It's an interesting and original take on ME2.  
_

_As always, if you have questions about some of what is referenced here, leave a review or PM and I will answer as fast as I can. :)_

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_'Human engineering is much like volus military responses: something they'd rather leave to someone else, but will surprise you when they come up something on their own.'  
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_\- Clan Matriarch Thessial Ayrixis of Steelshape, 'Dances With M-Strings and G-Strings'  
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Tali looked out over the line of frigates lined up in drydock, outlines blurred by scaffolding and cranes, surfaces swarming with repair bots and dockworkers. The inky blackness of space was lit by long lines of transports stuffed with raw materials, while the factories of the Pinnacle churned forth truck after truck of armor plating, missiles, and other supplies. It was an impressive sight, full of energy and organization.

Tali didn't know whether to be proud she had helped play a role in such a huge endeavor, or upset she hadn't been of more use. She'd expected to spend most of her time working with and directing the refit,since she was Shepard's Chief Engineer. While she knew she wasn't really familiar with all the technology used by humans, she had done well on the Normandy.

She knew she was smart, and a fast learner. She had figured it would be easy, working with human engineers and shipwrights on the Kazan and the rest of the fleet's refit, and spending time doing some study of Alliance engineering technology and principles. She'd also expected to do some training with Admiral Ahern, but she'd handled herself pretty well in the chase of Saren, and figured she'd just get some tips like Wrex had done for her.

She also figured she could spend whatever spare time she had figuring out how to proceed with whatever kind of relationship she was in with Jeff. If they had a chance to just sit down and talk, she was sure things would make more sense.

She'd had her perceptions on all these expectations corrected forcibly.

Unlike Shepard and Liara, Tali's time on Pinnacle had not been carefully planned. She ended up splitting her days working with engineers on the refits, learning about Alliance technology, and being beaten to a pulp by Ahern, who fitted her into his schedule when he had the time.

The largest part of her job was overseeing the refit of the three destroyers and five frigates that made up Shepard's fleet, but it became less about overseeing and more about fixing things she saw as flawed. She found herself attending meetings with senior human engineers and staff from the Systems Alliance Bureau of Military Ship Design, which most humans abbreviated to BuShips. The meetings went over all the changes they planned to make, with lots of arguing about who would pay for what and time-lines.

Tali was used to the quarian methods of refit, where ships were carefully assessed on their usefulness to the Fleet and how much it would cost to make them spaceworthy. The process she witnessed was more political and financial than technical, and she felt out of place listening to the discussions.

Shepard didn't seem to enjoy them much either, and more than once dragged Tali outside of the area where the meetings were held, smoking cigarettes and bitching about BuShips.

"Shepard, this isn't like any refit I'm used to. Why is there so much bickering?"

Shepard smiled, exhaling smoke and leaning against the wall of the Engineering Complex. "That's a long and stupid story, Tali. The short version is that the Alliance is trying to write checks with it's mouth that it's ass can't cash. The fleet just had the shit blown out of it, and everyone is screaming for more protection, more fleet coverage. So there's repairs going on all over the place, and only so much money allocated to it."

Shepard flicked ashes from her cigarette, shaking her head. "What is going on in there is basically dick-waving. The engineers have their orders and my authority from the President is pretty much absolute. BuShips is a pack of goddamned penny-pinching bean counters who we have to go through to order everything and get approval from to modify the ships we have."

Tali nodded. "And since the frigates are so old, modifying them costs the most."

Shepard nodded in return. "Yeah. It's a clusterfuck. It will be a week before we actually get any damned work done, I expect. The only reason I even show up is to shove BuShips back in place when they get too mouthy. When the actual work starts, you'll need to supervise what they do,if only to make sure they don't try to screw us with sub-standard equipment."

Tali had discussed the changes Shepard wanted with both the Assistant Engineer of the Kazan and the lead Engineer of the refit team, Commander James Tiva. The fleet's capabilities would be quite impressive when everything was done, although she didn't grasp all the various things they discussed, especially the weapons tech Lieutenant Commander Colms went on and on about in his creepy quiet voice. Colms did make a point of asking her about geth technology and defenses, and she told him what she could, recommending that if he needed more information that he could always contact the Migrant Fleet and Han'Gerrel vas Neema.

She spent most of the days during the first week alone. Joker was tied up with training the frigate pilots, Liara and Shepard immersed in their own training, and even the Kazan marines were busy. Since no real work was being done on the ships while the engineers argued and planned, she ended up trying to fill her days productively, reading up on the specifications of the ships, and on mingling with the Marine combat engineers that were training at Pinnacle.

She felt more than a little under-prepared in the aspect of being in charge of the combat engineering aspect of her job, and resolved to see how humans did it. Spending some time with the engineers from Pinnacle, she found out that human combat engineers were more soldiers than techs, and most human info-war programs were directed towards combat applications. She picked up what she could of these, offering them some quarian info-war programs in return.

As with the Marines on the Normandy, they were also endlessly gushing over the Reegar electroplasma shotgun she had, and she found herself making a rather large amount of money by rigging up simple electroplasma collectors for several Marines to augment their pistols or rifles with.

When the work on the ships finally got started, Tali spent time helping where she could. That's when she got her first real understanding of the differences in human and quarian methods.

The quarian tech base was a mix of their own technology with primarily salarian and turian bits and pieces cobbled together. It required additional work even to function in tandem with other systems, and almost all of the software they had was written from scratch. Engineering on a quarian ship was a dance of balancing tight resources, old code, and keeping a number of nearly-failing systems going a bit longer. They focused on making sure everything worked and that even beginning engineers could fix whatever problems popped up, since resources were so limited.

Humans, on the other hand, almost entirely used asari technology, augmented with whatever they'd managed to adapt to and integrate. Thus, as the refit began and Tali worked alongside the engineers and ship-fitters, she found she had to learn the intricacies of asari technology as adapted by humans, which was made more difficult by the fact that the humans used more than a little asari technology without fully understanding it in the first place.

Humans relied on packaged technologies and many of their 'repairs' were more akin to swapping out damaged parts for new ones and tossing the old ones out. They were clever in adapting pieces of asari equipment to their own technology, and Tali learned that many human companies actually built their tech as a wrapper around core pieces of asari optronics or other things the humans couldn't make themselves.

She found the human viewpoint on such things very frustrating. She'd seen it before, during the shakedown run, the stupid and wasteful overindulgence in backups, the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" attitude. But to see engineers happily installing systems that they had no idea how they worked seemed very wrong to her.

She tried pointing out inefficiencies in their methods, or issues with the installations that would cause repair problems down the line, only to be told that it had to be done a certain way 'because that's the way the asari taught us'. Instead of breaking things down and learning, humans were willing to simply slap together anything that worked and call it a day. Worse, from her point of view, the irritating bosh'tets from BuShips went along with this method, because it was cheaper to simply buy the tech from the asari in kits than investing time and effort in building the systems from scratch.

Things came to a head when it came to refitting one of the frigates as a scout, using an asari-based sensor package that literally had no instructions. That required assistance from the asari engineering group at Pinnacle, whom Tali had quickly come to hate. Aside from the fact that they made her feel clumsy and ugly, the asari were also condescending to her and tend to focus more on the humans than bothering to teach her anything. Rather than bother to answer questions, they simply assembled the pieces and left, leaving Tali and her teams to make sure connections were fitted, the hull breaches they made to install the tech was repaired, and so on.

When she'd asked some of the asari engineers about power drains and other difficulties she'd run into when integrating the systems, she found that they didn't want her learning about their technology. What little explanation they gave was so basic she could have figured it out herself, and they tended to talk snidely among themselves about her when they thought she couldn't hear them.

Tali responded by finding several areas of the refit where the asari had not done a proper job and pointing it out to the lead shipwright, but the man had merely shrugged it off. He told her that human methods had been working for years, and changing the way the asari did things might offend them, which couldn't be allowed to happen given that humans relied so much on that relationship in certain fields.

O-ATTWN-O

Tali found herself hoping the asari tripped over their oversized breasts, and gave up on trying to deal with the frustratingly obtuse asari technology. She caught up to Liara at one point in the second week, and the two sat on the mess deck of the Kazan drinking water. Liara was resting from a workout with Susan, and Tali was tired from spot-welding and crawling along hulls all day. Irritated and exhausted, she had vented a little to Liara about the situation, especially about the bosh'tet asari engineering staff.

Liara looked worn, but had listened politely, and her words were as gentle as usual. "Asari clan engineers are well known for their airs of superiority when dealing with aliens. I fear I can be of little use in teaching you much about our technology, since I am hardly an engineer, although I will be happy to go over whatever I learn with you."

Tali huffed, sipping at her water. "Why can't they be more like you?"

Liara had laughed at that. "I have often asked myself the same question, Tali. I can only say that the asari people value the sense of mystery that we project to others. My people tend to build things in a manner that is difficult to replicate, due to worries about salarians reverse engineering some of our more prized inventions."

Tali nodded, and folded her arms. "I can get that. But they are so rude! And the humans just let them do whatever they like without even questioning it. I spent all day doing welds and repairs on the hull of one of the frigates where they installed new sensor packages, and the asari had not even bothered to check to make sure all the connections were hardened against EMP!"

Liara gave her a calming smile. "My people tend to overspecialize. They are probably used to someone else coming along behind their work and doing what you did today – touching up on things they missed. The humans … Shepard has explained to me some of the situation. Humanity depends heavily on the asari and they hesitate to criticize asari methods or practices. Maybe they are simply trying to avoid offending us."

Tali snorted. "Or too busy staring at their breasts, more likely."

Liara laughed again. "I have noticed human fixation on certain asari attributes, but my own people also tend to emphasize such. I fear the most important invention the asari gained from humanity was the concept of artificial breast enlargement." She paused. "Well, that and chocolate."

Tali blinked, then shook her head. "I so wish you were teasing me."

O-ATTWN-O

Aside from overseeing the refit and learning about the ship systems, Tali spent a great deal of time engaged in various projects and pastimes. She spent time with the Assistant Engineer on the Kazan, learning the ins and outs of engineering requisitions. She worked with Shepard on adjusting some things on her Spectre armor, based on criticisms made by Admiral Ahern.

She spent time with Doctor Sedanya, per Shepard's orders, in detailing the requirements for a proper clean room in quarian fashion, ending up converting one of the lower-deck escape pod enclosures for that purpose. Still, when not being run into the deck by Ahern or helping with the refit, she found she had plenty of spare time.

Joker was still occupied with training the frigate pilots, so she decided to take the time to communicate with her father and Aunt Shala'Raan. Her conversation with her father was fairly perfunctory – he was glad to hear she was training with Ahern to increase her survivability, and his voice had a hint of smug pride when she complained about human engineering methods.

"Typical. When they end up losing ships to such negligence, no doubt they will complain it was sabotage instead of laziness."

She smirked, but shook her head. "I just don't understand why they act this way, Father. They are clearly highly intelligent and I don't see this trend of deference to the asari in their ground soldiers."

He sighed, his eyes crinkling as he gave a wry smile beneath his mask. "Tali, humans are still very new to the galactic scene. They are not natural engineers or systems builders, but improvisers. It hardly surprises me that they are using things they don't grasp in their reckless rush to prove themselves equal to the other races, nor does it shock me that the asari have used their haste against them."

Tali tilted her head. "Against them?"

Rael, sitting in his quarters, placed his fingers together, his glowing eyes narrowing slightly. "Some of this is politics, which you have not really been exposed to at a high level yet. In short, the asari have not remained the premiere civilization in the galaxy by merely looking pretty. They have very advanced technology – some of it beyond even salarian or quarian understanding. But their main method of staying in control is through using the weaknesses of other races against them."

He coughed, a sour note entering his hard voice. "The asari have always been skilled at finding advantage. They are ensuring the humans rely on them for technological advancement and investment, even while earning gratitude from them. They offer their technology freely to the humans, which not only stops them from buying salarian – or quarian – systems, but also lets them reap the advantages of any improvements the humans come up with for free."

Tali scowled. "Humans aren't dumb, father – they must realize this is happening."

He nodded. "They are not dumb, but they are still probably very frightened. The turians had them minutes from complete conquest when the asari saved them, and I suppose there is also the fact that asari resemble them so strongly. Unconsciously they probably trust them more than other aliens. There is also the fact that sometimes you give up one advantage to gain a greater one. The humans may be taken advantage of in some ways, but the asari are terrifying allies, and probably have stopped the batarians or turians from further aggression."

As usual, he continued to urge her to be cautious and again suggested coming home rather than risking her life with Shepard, but at least they ended their talk in a polite manner.

Tali's conversation with Shala'Raan was more upbeat. Her aunt was delighted at the changes already happening for the Flotilla, as quarian society shifted it's focus and operations to rejoin Citadel society for the first time in centuries. She filled Tali in on the developments and new events, as well as how quarians were slowly getting used to the idea of not being vagabond wanderers any longer.

"We've already scouted two worlds the turians find too cold and dry, but would be perfect for our people. And the volus have begun enlisting the help of the Engineering Chorus to assist with building their first dreadnaught, giving us docking rights and mining rights in return. For the first time in centuries we have hope, Tali."

Tali smiled. "I'm so happy to hear that. Jeff is always telling me that the quarian people will make it through, but I'm glad to see it actually happening."

Shaala's eyes crinkled. "You keep mentioning this Jeff, even more than Shepard. Who is he?"

Tali stammered a bit. "Just a friend...I .. he helped me quite a bit in the search for Saren. With fitting in with the humans. He's the best pilot I've ever seen or even heard of."

Shaala laughed. "Oh, Prazza'Mal will debate that. He was bragging loudly that he'd managed to take out a pair of pirates by a slingshot maneuver that let him crash their missiles into each other."

Tali snorted, and related some of Joker's more incredible piloting stunts, including the insane stunts he'd pulled at Feros, and Shaala gave a low whistle. "He sounds very impressive, Tali. Although your voice and posture suggest he is more than a friend."

Tali was quiet for a long time, before speaking in a quiet tone. "I don't know for sure. Or rather, I do, I'm just not sure if I'm ready to admit it to myself or him. I...I know that too many of the males aboard the Fleet just see me as the Admiral's Daughter. Every time someone showed an interest, it was because they wanted to use me to get in close to my father. Most of them didn't even bother to hide it, as if I should be honored some Nara or Koris found me a good brood mare."

Shaala sighed. "I can't say that isn't true, but getting involved with aliens is dangerous, Tali. Turians are one thing. They're dextro like us, and due their plating can stand under a sterilization lamp before anything intimate. Humans are not...and just because some of the males of the Flotilla act like idiots is no reason to assume anyone interested in you can't see the beautiful person you are."

Tali shook her head. "He...Keelah." She swallowed, trying to explain the tangle of emotions. The frustration she felt for him, for his condition, for the way he was treated. The anger and fury at how his own people ignored his true feelings. The gentleness and tenderness he always showed towards her, his humor and good cheer when she was down. The real anger in his voice when he ranted at the shopkeepers who discriminated against her on the Citadel.

She found herself almost angry that Shaala didn't see why he was important to her, and when she told her of the conversation they'd been forced into having in Shepard's stateroom – about his pained statement that he didn't expect her to sacrifice her home or her chance to have a family for him, and his sad look when she didn't know how to reply, Shaala interrupted her.

"Tali. Calm down." The quarian woman ran her hands along the edges of her reik, tugging at it in a sign of agitated thought. "There is an old saying that comes to mind. Love only knows what it wants, not how to get there. I can't tell you not to chase happiness, but I don't want you to be hurt, either."

She glanced away. "Your father never told you, but when he was on his Pilgrimage on the Citadel, he became involved – romantically – with a turian female. He was quite attached to her. He came very close to not returning to the Flotilla, and only did so when she died in tragic circumstances to save his life. He was very bitter when he came back, and it was only your mother who – through long and hard devotion – drew him out of that depression."

Tali's eyes widened. Her father had been sleeping with a turian girl? "H-How long did …."

Shaala shrugged. "Two years. Sanas Sovirian was a very incredible turian. Her death was a tragedy, and is one reason why your father is so cold and bitter today. I don't want you to make the same mistake in regards to falling in love with an alien and being torn between duty and love." She shivered. "I also wouldn't mention this to your father..."

Tali sighed. "He probably already suspects. He spent a lot of time talking with Jeff when I was … hurt. He knows Jeff has seen me outside of my suit."

Shaala nodded. "And how well did he handle seeing you? Only a few humans have, and some of them took it poorly."

Tali swallowed. "He said I was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen."

Shaala sighed, then laughed. "I think I'll send you a few packets of tucharel tea. You have some hard thinking to do, and tea always helps. My advice is the same as it has always been, Tali. Don't follow your father's footsteps. Do what makes you happy. Believe in yourself. Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."

Tali dissolved in laughter.

O-ATTWN-O

Tired of not being able to find Joker, she spent a few hours looking for him, only to find him the fighter flight training center with Ahern, surrounded by fighter pilots. Joker took a quick break to say hi and ask how her day went, a question she sort of ignored of favor of asking what he was doing.

"Owning everyone on this station." He cackled, and Ahern shouted at him to get back in the simulator.

She hadn't interacted with any of the other pilots on the station in her refits, because they rarely had anything to do with her. On top of that, they all seemed insulting and cocky to her, constantly bragging how they'd own the 'frigate boy' in any real dogfight when his name came up.

Joker had apparently taken that as a challenge, and after finishing training the frigate pilots each day, came here to show up Ahern's best.

When Joker took the best that Ahern's pilots could throw at him in the simulators without breaking a sweat, Ahern got interested, then irritated, and finally completely furious. She got laugh after laugh watching Ahern heap abuse on his pilots for losing, especially as the man became more and more foul-mouthed as his frustration rose.

"He's ONE goddamned man! There are eleven of you spastic fuckups and you can't take one fucking man? I have no fucking clue who trained you simpering imbeciles, and when I find out they'd better have an answer as to why you all just got owned in an eleven to one dogfight."

After a particularly bad beating, one pilot had decided to pull up Joker's service record. Upon seeing his rating – class fifteen, the highest possible in the SA systems – several pilots had implied they weren't trained to Joker's level. Ahern had hurled his hat across the training room and exploded into profanity.

"He's been in service nine goddamned years, and eight of them were flying warships! You've been flying fighters for fifteen! You expect me to believe he's more fucking experienced? Pull your shit together and stop him, or I will have you clean the entire fucking fighter bay with your goddamned tongue!"

Another simulation ended in disaster, and one particularly bitter pilot complained Joker must have hacked the system somehow.

The salarian tech laughed himself silly at the idea, while Ahern stood over the man and glared.

"The system is written in fucking turian and salarian code! Unless he's a fucking polymath and can code as well as he beats the shit out of you clowns, he has as much chance of hacking the system as you do of ever being fucking promoted again in my command. That is the stupidest fucking thing I have heard all goddamned week. You're so fucking shitbrained that if you fell into a barrel of titties, you would come out sucking your thumb! Get out of my face!"

Tali had muffled her suit speakers so Ahern couldn't hear her guffawing.

A couple of the pilots protested the simulation was 'unfair'. Ahern had literally turned red. "Unfair? What is fucking unfair is that some of my goddamned hard-earned taxpayer dollars are going into your salaries, and you rejects can't even stop one fucking man from owning you nine of you like a krogan in a goddamned nursery. Get the fuck back in the simulation and kill that arrogant little bastard, or I will shove my feet up both your asses and wear you around like a pair of autistic flip-flops!"

Tali had problems breathing from laughing so hard, especially when Ahern, determined to find something Joker couldn't handle, loaded up an old simulation of the turian invasion of Sol during the First Contact War. Joker eventually died, but not before knocking fifteen turian fighters out of the sky, taking out the bridge of a cruiser, and even landing two torpedoes on the turian command dreadnaught, something the entirety of the _Solguard_ had failed to do in real life.

Ahern was speechless for at least a full minute while Joker smugly smiled at him, his mouth opening, then closing, then opening again. Finally, he jabbed a finger at Jeff and snarled. "You're a good pilot. I can't seem to find anyone to beat you in the pilots chair, but I can fucking kill you by tripping you. Don't get too goddamned cocky."

O-ATTWN-O

She trained with the admiral whenever she had free time after she finished refit efforts, mostly on a mix of combat survival, info-war tactics, and mixing up various tactical approaches. It was hard and he didn't coddle her, often losing his temper when she didn't perform up to his expectations and making her repeat things over and over.

Given their first meeting, she had expected nothing less. When she'd first showed up for training, he'd ordered her to report to his office armed. From what she had heard from Shepard, Liara, Cole and some of the Kazan's marines, this was likely involve Ahern screaming at her, so she stiffened her spine and decided she wasn't going to be pushed around by some bosh'tet with glittery shoulders.

She entered, walking up to the Admiral sitting at his desk, her posture confident. He was reviewing something on a pad and nodded as she entered, gesturing to a chair in front of the desk. "Have a sit down, Ms. Zorah. I'm going over some information on you and I have some questions, but first I need to say a few things first."

He tapped the padd. "I'm glad to see that you are like me regarding hard work. You work harder than any of the other people in your engineering team. You dislike waste and you take pride in what you have accomplished. Your reports are all positive in terms of your maturity and your refusal to accept second-best bullshit or sloppy work. This is good."

He leaned back in his chair. "While you have certainly survived an ordeal that would reduce most people to a smear, that isn't to say you didn't make mistakes. You are far too aggressive when fighting geth, and too reliant on others to soak damage for you in a firefight. In that regard, you are not so good."

He tapped the padd. "For a military officer in the Systems Alliance, your skills frankly suck. For a civilian teenager caught up in a situation that would leave most people a weeping wreck, you're actually damn near awesome. I don't say that to complement you or insult you – merely to state a fact."

She nodded, his demeanor reminding her a lot of her father, and he continued. "I am unfortunately rather time limited, since most of my focus is spent on working with Shepard and T'Soni. That woman needs a lot of work, and LTC T'Soni isn't much better. The magnitude of their shitfuckery is far more inexcusable than yours, since Shepard is supposed to be a special forces soldier and the asari has been alive longer than I have."

He shrugged. "Since you've been working on the refit and increasing your engineering knowledge, I know you aren't the kind of person who just sits on their ass. Shepard, your Commissar, and several engineering officers have all highlighted you as a very hard worker with an excellent attention to detail. That is very commendable." He held up a finger.

"However, you are not a trained soldier and you do not show the same focus in training yourself to be one.. You are, and don't take this the wrong way, fragile. A literal glass cannon. No matter how hard you hit, you can't take a hit. You've already lost a goddamned leg and had, according to the records, three severe suit breeches, when most of your people die after one. You have been extremely lucky so far, but luck is the worst possible thing to depend on when guns are blazing."

"Given that as the Chief Engineer there is no damned reason for you to be traipsing around on some hostile planet, stumbling around in a dank goddamned hole full of geth and getting yourself ventilated, I'm hoping that your focus on being a good engineer and not focusing on combat training won't come back to haunt you."

"I'll do what I can to give you some tips and improve your survivability. But keep in mind that you're not a front-line combatant, and that going head-up against trained special forces soldiers like Saren is stupid. Leave heroics to people who get shot for a living. The only thing you prove by being shot is that you are too stupid to duck. You've gone up against odds that no civilian teenager should have to face, and your luck won't hold forever."

She squared her shoulders. "My father said similar things when I trained with the Migrant Fleet Marines. He told me that I didn't need to … prove I was some kind of hero by being nearly killed." She sighed. "But I don't want to simply stand around being useless either. I'm happy to learn whatever you can teach me. I'm not just a helpless child, Admiral."

He sighed. "No, you are not. You've got just enough skill to get yourself brutally killed instead of just instantly killed. I've worked with quarian marines before. Your people have had to deal with a lot of bullshit over the years, and I'm sure it has lead many of you to be bitter. To feel like you have something to prove. But the words your father gave you were absolutely correct. You survived Saren. That pretty much proves to anyone with a damned brain you aren't merely a 'helpless child', but there's a large difference between surviving once and being ready for combat of that level on a regular basis."

She shook her head. "I do understand what you are saying, and I know my skills need improvement. I'm willing to work hard to do just that. I cannot back out on my oath made to the Alliance simply because I face danger. And I am tired of my father trying to lock me away in safety. I chose this job – to take Sara's offer – because I need to prove something to myself. That when I feel ready and go back to my people that I am an adult."

She sighed. again "And to show my father that I can take care of myself."

Ahern flinched at her words, and glanced away. Tali frowned. His posture had shifted, from bored to … pained. As if something she had said had hurt him. She fidgeted a bit in her seat as the silence stretched on. "Admiral Ahern?"

He didn't say anything for a long moment, then gave her a hard look. It was a look filled with pain, and loss, and something darker. "Ms. Zorah. Do you honestly believe that? That you can take care of yourself?"

He forced an exhalation of breath. "I've buried a lot of good soldiers who thought that. Friends. People I cared about deeply. One day I'll tell you about it. What I want you to get through your skull for now is that you CANNOT take care of yourself. You are full of stupid, ignorant ideas about proving yourself. What do you think your father will do, or your family, if you 'prove' yourself by dying? Do you think they will be happy you died like a goddamned hero? Or shattered at losing you?"

She wilted under his glare. Auntie Raan would be distraught. Her father …

Before she could finish the thought, Ahern exhaled again, and his jaw tightened. "I am going to run you into the motherfucking ground, Ms. Zorah. I am going to drill you until you curse the day you even picked up a gun, and then drill you some more."

He stood. "Since I don't have much time with you, my focus will be on first making sure you stop treating cover as if it was going to bite you and learn how to not stop biotic shockwaves with your leg."

True to his word, he was absolutely brutal.

He didn't bother with Tali's physical conditioning so much as her balance and coordination. He told her that physical strength wouldn't do her much good, and that speed and evasiveness would serve her better. Her cybernetic leg was not something she'd adjusted to yet, and he spent the first sessions working on that.

He made her duck in and out of cover in an obstacle course, cursing when she wasn't fast enough and making her start over, until she was soaked in sweat and her limbs were trembling. He had her learn the marine method of cover-crawling, wriggling on the ground to lower her profile, and the entire time he lectured her on the importance of staying out of sight.

"You live and die by that goddamned suit. The less fire you take, the less fucking holes it develops and the less likely you are to die of horribly consumptive fucking viruses. Or you can just keep having limbs shot off until you're the quarian version of a Shieldbreaker, I suppose."

Ahern had the armor plates of her suit removed, and shipped them off to be augmented with projected omni-armor fields backstopped with an inch of ballistic spall padding. Once she had them reattached, he suggested she lighten the weight by way of eezo-assisted lift fields built into the armor itself, much as she had incorporated into Jeff's braces.

While she fiddled with that on the side, he made her do endless shotgun drills. He agreed with much of what Wrex taught her, and had her go through it again and again until her arms ached so badly she cried, but he just pushed her harder. "The enemy is not going to give a shit if you are tired, or sore, or wounded. Pain lets you know you have not bled the fuck out yet. Do it fucking again, correctly this time, or I will keep you here all fucking night and the refit can go directly to hell."

He dragged her to the armory and had her fire off a selection of submachine guns, finally outfitting her with a human aftermarket conversion of an asari Tempest, with the plasma-caster removed and replaced with human kinetic rail technology. It fired very rapidly with low recoil, and Ahern had tweaked it with a pulse resonance ring at the barrel, so the shots would do more damage to a biotic's barriers. Between it and her Reegar, he felt she could deal with any medium to close range threats – if she was good enough.

That led to submachine gun drills, mostly against hordes of simulated enemies in a VI-controlled holographic combat environment. "Suppression, evasion, misdirection! If they can't fucking pin you down, they cannot stop you. When you stop moving, you start dying."

Only when he was satisfied with her evasion and suppression skills did he combine the two with her shotgun practice, moving into the tricky part of combat: closing range. Ideally she would use her info-war abilities and submachine gun fire to cover her advance, then draw enemies into her cone of fire and unload with her Reegar.

"Your shotgun will drop anything from pissed off krogan to geth, but it's not a weapon meant to run and gun with. Draw them to YOU, make them expose themselves and aim to cripple. It fires in a sweeping cone, so use that like a fan, sweep them down and make sure they can't get in close quarters range."

When he moved onto training her in combat engineering and info-war techniques, he was equally critical of her existing skill set. He was not, she found, a big fan of drones. "Drones are wonderful little shits until some other asshole with a better routing switch in his omni hacks it and kills you with your own tech. The fact that you tend to use them against geth, of all fucking things, is so dense I'm surprised light doesn't bend around you. They hack things better than anyone else!"

He had her modify her drones to operate mostly as recon and distraction devices rather than direct combat systems. "The quarian marine use of drones to magnify your forces is great in mass combat. But for you, what you need is awareness to make sure no one gets close, and time to pull off other combat engineering feats, not some shiny target spewing missiles and saying 'please send a missile my way'."

He instead gave her several programs to generate what Marines called 'party favors'. They were simple flash-compression plasma grenades cast in a thin magnetic field that splashed plasma and a burst of electrical feedback into whatever they hit. Another program he gave her would allow them to arc high and home in on a target, while a third let her combine them with her tech mines to form 'sticky' traps.

Other 'tricks' included staged weapon hacks that would, instead of completely shutting down a weapon, throw a fluctuation into it's accelerator pattern, making fire from the weapon extremely inaccurate. Augmented plasma throwers, cascading and rebounding 'omnishock' clouds, and a nasty hack-script that would mess with the onboard life support units of some kinds of armor were also things he added.

He also focused on increasing her defenses, particularly to incoming fire. Along with the omni-armor, he had her use a larger and more powerful omni-shield, with a larger power supply she installed in the spaces of her cybernetic leg. The shield was large enough to block almost all incoming fire, with a notch in the side to allow suppressive fire with her SMG. Combined with routing electrical charges to the shield for close combat, it doubled her ability to soak fire.

The third and fourth weeks he focused on maneuver and cover again, but this time under heavy fire and combined with info-war techniques. He had her add more functions to her drones, adding a mix of close range suppression and harassment to the recon functions, and switching the micro-missiles for a plasma projector and a wide angle arc electrical stun field that would also scramble geth who got caught by it. He figured her turret was pretty good as it was, but had her replace the rarely used ECM functions on it with a static hard shield generator, adding a third layer of possible protection.

"Your goal is not just to make yourself a hard target, but one that is too much of a goddamned pain to waste time trying to crack. That lets you do your hacking or info-war magic without some bastard trying to smash your head open. Incoming light fire will just bounce, and the heavier stuff should at least be deflected long enough for you to reposition, asses,and lay down traps. Use them to control the enemy movement! Don't get flanked."

By the fifth week, she felt she had improved quite a bit. Rather than charging forward and using her drones to shoot things while she flanked, she now could hunker down in heavy cover and launch wave after wave of info-war attacks, multifunction drones, and various grenades to harass and wear down an opponent before going in for the kill.

He had seemed pleased about her level of progress, but as she recovered from her final training session, he had an odd, unhappy expression on his face. She bit her lip and walked over to him, shipping her shotgun as she did so.

He looked at her, giving a faint, bitter smile. "Looking back on what you've learned, Ms. Zorah...do you still think that you could have taken care of yourself before we started this?"

She ducked her head. "No. I … I was convinced that I had to … I don't know." She wrung her hands. "All my life I was under the gaze of everyone, expected to live up to being as good as my father, and I never felt like I was! He didn't even want me to go on Pilgrimage to prove myself, but I did, and if I hadn't what might have happened?"

She glared up at him, and he nodded. "What indeed."

He sighed. "Young lady, I think there is a time in life every person wants to prove themselves. Show they are ready, that they deserve respect. But it is also the most dangerous time in a young person's life, because they usually_ aren't_ ready, and few people get a chance to make sure they really prepare themselves for this cold old galaxy."

He sighed, glancing away. "You told me you wanted to prove to your father that you weren't a little girl anymore. That you could take care of yourself. Those words hit me, because I've heard them before." He tapped his omni, bringing up a haptic image frame in midair. The face of a young human woman appeared, dark red hair framing kind eyes and a laughing smile, her features a softer version of Ahern's.

"My daughter, Amanda. My only child. She was nineteen when she joined the Marine Corps, fresh and eager to protect humanity. I worried constantly about her, especially when she refused to work for me in the safety here at Pinnacle and instead ending up serving with a frontier defense unit on a colony in the Traverse. We argued quite a bit, mainly because she kept getting hurt in the line of duty, trying to prove that she was as much of a badass as her daddy."

"She told me to stop worrying. She could take care of herself. And rather than tell her how stupid she was, I just told her I was proud of her and knew she could."

He closed his eyes. "Batarian pirates struck the colony she was stationed at, at least three ships worth of the bastards. The civilians were herded to the shelters while the defense unit dug in and waited for relief from the RIU and Third Fleet. The CO was a spineless fucking coward who, instead of falling back in good order, panicked. The XO was a good soldier, but out of her depth, and her inexperience left her flank exposed." He sighed. "If the flank collapsed, the pirates would have taken down the last GARDIAN tower and overrun the shelters."

His voice was even and cold, now, and Tali almost shuddered when he opened his eyes, his gaze dead. "Rather than fall back, Amanda and her best friends led their detachment in a charge to break the batarian advance. They succeeded, driving the four-eyed fucks back long enough for more marines to shore up the breach, and they held long enough for relief forces to arrive and drive them off for good."

"But in the attack, she got killed. Rather than stay in cover and watch her friends get killed, she lead from the front. She killed six of the bastards and dragged two of her friends away from the fighting, but she didn't check her six. She forgot what I taught her, trying to be a damned hero. A sniper shot her. Twice. The first shot didn't kill her, broke her back."

He grimaced. "She might have survived, if she'd crawled away, but the sniper started targeting her friends. She threw grenades at the batarians, drawing their fire, allowing her friends to get away, and the sniper's next shot killed her."

His voice was weary, cold, and soft. "The SA made her into a goddamned heroic martyr, named a fucking cruiser after her, and gave her the Star of Terra. People came to tell me how proud I must have been of her, of her sacrifice, and her devotion to protect innocent lives."

Tali nodded slowly. That kind of sacrifice sounded like something straight out of the Fleet Marines, in the endless tales they had of how a quarian had died so that his or her shipmates could live.

Ahern looked up at her, face twisting in sorrowful anger. "I didn't want to be proud of her, Ms. Zorah. I didn't want to fucking sacrifice her. I wanted my daughter alive. I wanted to hear her laugh, to watch her smile. I wanted to see her get married and have children, to settle down and move beyond merely being a soldier. I wanted to protect her from this sick, evil fucking cesspool we live in."

He laughed, bitterly. "Instead, I was scared of driving her away. Instead of demanding she stay safe, using my influence to get her off the goddamned frontier, I told myself she wasn't a little girl anymore That she had to make her own choices. That she didn't need me interfering in her life."

His voice was so bitter she flinched. "That she could take care of herself." He was silent for several seconds, then shook his head.

The admiral gave her a steady, hard look. "I read in the reports that Shepard filed on you that you had friction with your father. Shepard seems to think he is too hard on you, too dismissive of your achievements."

He snorted. "Given that Shepard can't even understand the reactions of humans all the time, I'm not surprised she fucked up identifying why your father is against this idea, and upset you are out here and not back home on your Migrant Fleet. He's against it not because he doesn't believe in you, but because the last thing any father can bear is watching his little girl get hurt. Or worse, fucking killed."

He lifted his jaw. "I just put you through as much training as I could, and I'm sure it was hard. Hell, you probably hate me for it. But I did it, Ms. Zorah, for the best of reasons. I have enough goddamned nightmares in my sleep, of shit I've gotten wrong and friends left dead in a hundred battles. I have a lot of black marks on my soul, but I will be damned to the lowest circle of Hell before I look another father in the eye and tell him I let his little girl dash out into combat and get her head blown off because she needed to feel _useful_."

He folded his arms. "I'm praying you remember what I said. It will save your life, and that of your comrades. But if you won't listen to me for that, then at least think of your father, and don't make him suffer what I go through every day because you want to prove you aren't a child."

With that, he turned away, leaving her to do some hard thinking about the path she was on, and how she really wanted to proceed.

O-ATTWN-O

It was in light of that conversation that she sat down one evening and pulled up the Alliance comm database, scrolling through links until she found the communication address for Lieutenant Dost, the kindly human who'd rescued her on Caleston. She'd not forgotten the fact that he lived with, and was apparently intimate, with a quarian female, Kiala'Shaal. Tali had learned that Kiala'Shaal was exiled from the fleet, for reasons to do with the Severing Rebellion a few years back, where several ship captains had decided to break away from the Flotilla to work for Aria T'Loak.

Tali had been too young to remember many details, but it had clearly poisoned Kiala'Shaal against her own people. She'd been sharp and hostile to Tali during the time she was there, and Dost had repeatedly apologized for her vitriol.

Still, Tali had no one else she could think of to ask for advice about Jeff, much less her career in the SA. Ahern's story had rattled her spirits and put her father's attitude towards her in an entirely new light, and she realized she couldn't, to borrow Shepard's words, keep running in place if she wanted to end up anywhere.

She exhaled as the comm link came online, then smiled as Dost's broad-shouldered form and kindly features filled the screen. "Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Long time no see."

She bobbed her head. "Lieutenant Dost, it's good to see you again. Did you get my message and Troyce's ship?"

Dost's face flickered with pain, and he nodded. "Yeah, I did. I was worried about that old man, even before he took that last job. I should have known something was off about it, but I didn't expect the Broker to break his own rules about the safety of informants to sniff out a traitor. I nearly got you killed, and I did get him killed. I'm sorry."

Tali shook her head. "It isn't your fault. I felt it was mine, but I... I realize now that I couldn't have stopped the krogan. They were just too strong, and Troyce ... died well, as cold as that sounds. His sacrifice helped me get the information to the Council, and ended up making Shepard a Spectre and stopping Saren and Benezia."

He nodded, grinning. "I heard about that. You've made quite the name for yourself. Kiala'Shaal was pretty impressed you were able to hang with a badass like the Butcher, and we all saw the media footage when they brought you out of that mountain on Noveria. I was worried you'd died."

She laughed softly. "No. But I have a cybernetic leg now, which my father wasn't too happy about."

Dost laughed also. "I bet." He peered at her suit and reik. "Why are you wearing Alliance colors, trimmed in Zorah purple?"

She exhaled. "I'm now Lieutenant Commander Tali'Zorah nar Kazan, M6 Chief Engineer. I was given a class II citizenship for helping fight Saren and Benezia, and I took a commission to stick with Shepard when she got her promotion."

Dost's jaw dropped. "Holy shit. _Everybody _was scrambling to try to get a spot in her taskforce, even though they kept what it's doing hush-hush. You must be pretty damned good to get that kind of placement. And to commission a quarian as an LTC...wow." He looked extremely impressed.

Tali ducked her head. "Shepard didn't have the slot open for competition, she told the people in charge of finding officers that I was going to be her Chief Engineer and that was that." She looked back up. "Given how your people do engineering, I'm starting to wonder if that was a wise choice or not."

Dost folded his arms. "Hard to say, ma'am. You'll find service in the Blue can be frustrating at times, mostly because there's never enough money or equipment to go around, and yet you're tasked with important jobs you can't afford to fail. Corners get cut, supply officers go through back channels, and security lieutenants end up moonlighting as contacts for the Shadow Broker." He scratched his chin. "Still, quarian to human is a big culture shock, or at least it was for Kiala'Shaal. She's had time to adjust, but at first it was very touch and go."

Tali nodded. "I ... I actually called hoping I could speak with her about a ... well." She ducked her head and then forced herself past her shy nervousness. "About a relationship I am in, with a human man. Or want to be in."

Dost gave her a long look, then sighed. "I knew I was good looking, but I didn't really think one exposure to me would make you go off and start sleeping with human guys. I told you I had that effect on all the quarian girls."

She stared at him for a long second before bursting into laughter. "Bosh'tet!"

He laughed, and rolled his shoulders. "Yeah, I can try to get her to talk to you. Maybe now that you're wearing the Blues she'll be more open to the idea, or at least less 'claw your air-hoses off'. Stay put."

The screen was empty for almost two minutes, displaying the plain walls of what was clearly Dost's apartment. A rather old looking and beaten couch, with a quarian style knitted cover, loomed on the left side, while a hanging done in the quarian style of Caleston City's skyline dominated the far wall.

A slender quarian female in a black and red reik with a black, shiny environment suit sat down in front of the comm pickup. Her mask was smoked black instead of the normal purple of the Flotilla, giving her glowing eyes a dimmed, sad appearance. Her posture was stiff, angry, and sullen, her voice a lilting contralto full of the accent of the Shellen liveship families.

"So, now the princess is a heroine, the darling of the day. A proper Kilmest'a. I'm rather shocked to hear you joined the Alliance instead of running home to daddy. Jason dragged me in here to talk to you, but I don't see why I should bother."

Tali bit her lip. "Kiala'Shaal,I am coming to you as an eal'xaub, seeking your knowledge and advice. It would be an honor of service to the Zorah Clan if you were to assist me, one I swear on my family honor and rights."

Kiala hissed, in a mix of amusement and confusion. A eal'xaub was the quarian term for 'honored adviser' or 'teacher', usually a trusted family retainer that provided reliable and confidential advice on dangerous or secretive topics. To declare her doing so an honor of service on behalf of the Zorah was to offer her a way out of exile, for Tali to pledge her own name to attempt to repay a debt that could only be fulfilled by the entire Clan.

"Arrogant tuho, why should I help you? What could you even want from a broken exile like me anyway?

Tali gave a tired sigh. "Because there is no one else who can help me. I need advice."

Kiala'Shaal snorted. "I advise you to leave me alone, princess. The Flotilla has washed their hands of me, and I of them. You don't even understand why I am exiled, and you promise to aid me."

Tali shook her head. "I know why they exiled you. I didn't have anything to do with why you were exiled. You did. Your clan did. Your people went to try and steal from the Flotilla to work for a murderous criminal, and when you were caught used violence."

Kiala'Shaal glared at her. "You're an ignorant foolish child. The Rebellion was necessary. The quarian people were dying by pieces every year, with fewer medicines, less ships, more sickness, more deaths, fewer births. It was either work for those who tolerated us or continue to live off scraps and begging until we died out. We gambled and we lost. Only _one _ship opened fire, but all of us were exiled, with nothing to our names. They threw out six hundred of us and five hundred and eleven died in the first month, and your father was the top of the list of those who'd suggested we all be executed."

Tali shook her head. "You were _wrong. _The quarians are now on the Council, and we will have a place to live, and we will grow stronger and recover. Because we didn't give up and just decide it was better to become criminals." She narrowed her eyes. "I let you yell at me last time, because I _didn't_ know. I'm not the same stupid little girl. I need your help, and I'm willing to risk my neck and name for it, because I can't trust anyone else with it... and because what you did was in it's own way for the quarian people, not against them. No one deserves exile for trying to do what is right."

Kiala stared at her for long seconds, her voice wary but somewhat less hostile. "I could just say no. I don't owe you anything. Why should I help you when I am happy with life as it is?"

Tali looked away. "I don't have a choice. For more than one reason, you are the only person I can ask. You can refuse to help me just to spite me, but I haven't done anything to deserve that. Maybe you hate my father. Hate him, but don't punish me for that, or you're not any better than the Conclave was in exiling you."

Kiala snorted at that, but then sighed. "I expected some kind of threat if I didn't cooperate."

Tali sighed. "I'm not asking you to be my friend, or that I have some right to demand help. I'm saying I need your help, and I'll do what I can to help you if you are willing to do the same. I respect Lieutenant Dost too much to hurt you, but I _will_ make sure you never, ever return to the Fleet and that no quarian speaks with you again if you refuse to help me simply because of what the Conclave did to you." She said this last in the hardest tone she could.

Kiala'Shaal's shoulders slipped back, a sign of wary surprise. "You … bah. That is no hrarxal." But there was a note in her voice and Tali smiled when she heard it.

"Ha. Even in exile, I expect your relatives still call you, still try to keep in touch. That quarians on Pilgrimage put up with you just to have someone they can trust. You value that contact, Kiala'Shaal. I know because I've been cut off from my people for over a year now. The only time I get to see my father is when I've been nearly killed and am recovering in some hospital. Cutting you off from the Flotilla is more of a threat to you than some stupid attempt at violence."

Kiala'Shaal's eyes narrowed, and she gave a small toss of her head. "You aren't the timid little v'tha cowering in my apartment from last year."

Tali's voice was very deadpan. "I've had a hard fucking month."

Kiala surprised her with a short laugh, then folded her arms. "Let's hear what you want me to _advise _you on, princess, before I agree to anything. The fact that you aren't running home and are instead wearing human colors means you aren't completely full of the arrogance of your father, but I want details about your request before anything else."

Tali nodded, and folded her hands together. "I want … I mean. I am in love with a human." She rushed the words out, then cringed. Biting her lip, she continued to speak. "I'm not sure how to proceed, or what to do. How to reach him or get out of my suit to be with him. You live with Lieutenant Dost. You have lived with humans for a while now. You ... you can tell me what to do."

She hated how weak and desperate she sounded, but she didn't feel like she had any other choices. Relying on the extranet for information would be criminally stupid. Just talking with Jeff had not really gotten her anywhere because she didn't know how to safely be with him outside of her suit, but she couldn't really say they had a relationship if she couldn't even _kiss _him.

Ahern's brutal story, her aunt's teasing, the isolation and frustration of the refit – she felt like if she didn't have something to cling to she would implode. And she didn't know how to take the first step.

Kiala was silent for a whole minute before speaking, her voice tinged with something like disbelief. "You, the scion of the oldest, highest family in the entire Flotilla, daughter of the High Admiral, who could probably have any male in the entire race by merely whispering a few words and finding a clean room...want to …"

The quarian woman suddenly convulsed with hard laughter, throwing her head back and slapping her hands on her knees in mirth. Tali stared at her, mortified and angry, as Kiala'Shaal took a good ten seconds to stop laughing and only snicker, shoulders shaking.

"Keelah, that is the most hilarious thing I have ever heard. Your father – "

Tali snapped. "My father loves me, but he can't protect me forever. It's my life, and I can't live it the way he lived his, because he's miserable. I'm not going to make myself miserable just so he can not feel bad about the way he raised me." She shook. "Jeff … he said...I was beautiful."

Kiala'Shaal's laughter trailed off, and she tilted her head. "So did Jason, when he first saw me. Most humans...don't feel that way. The claws. The jaw and teeth. The lack of ears, the eyes." She shook her head. "Why are you doing this? Love? Rebellion against your father? Or just a need to get your birth wound plowed?"

Tali cringed at the dirty overtones of the last, but squared her shoulders. "I can't answer that except to say nothing else feels right. The males of the Flotilla just want me for my name, not me. The average quarian won't ever see me, just my father's shadow and our family's influence. I go back home, and I'll be locked into the safest position I can be, married to some bosh'tet with the proper connections so Father can have his way in the Conclave more often, and expected to turn out the next generation of Zorahs." She shook her head.

"Jeff...makes me feel like I am wanted. Like I am needed. And he has no one else but me. No one to pick him up, no one to cheer him on. He suffers from a human disorder of fragile bones, and until I came along these humans just let him suffer. I can call it love, but I won't know for sure until it is more than me saying words I can't back up."

She sighed, and twisted her hands. "I can't do this by myself. You know how ... to live with a human."

Kiala gave an inelegant grunt. "I'll help you do this, just to see the look on your father's face when he finds out, and to hear the screaming of the Lesser Families when they realize you won't be dirtying a clean room with their stupid thuglet sons." She folded her arms again, eyes narrowed.

"You are going to be sicker than you ever thought possible, girl. Vomiting, bleeding from your birth wound, coughing up blood, and swelling until you feel like a sathu sausage. You are going to hurt the first time you enter into vhgras, because humans and quarians don't quite line up the right way. You are going to go through a lot of hassle with immunosupressants, herbs, and linking sickness, and damn near bankrupt yourself on antibiotics and allergen nanodrugs."

Tali closed her eyes, thinking about it. Then she shrugged. "Is it worth it?"

Kiala'Shaal snorted. "Did you not see my bahnt? Dost makes most of the males in the Fleet look like boys." Her voice took on an almost dreamy note, then hardened. "But we are not talking of me. Whether or not it's worth is more dependent on what you put into it. Humans can't feel the bonding. They don't experience the soul calling. Your hormones won't react to his in the same way, they will keep imploring you to bring him closer and you can't. There will always be an element of .. longing, no matter how often you make love or cling to his body. "

She sighed. "Fleet and Flotilla is very accurate when it comes to the frustrations and eventual fanatical need of Sarar vas Lepin in her relationship to Hierax Mehkuri."

Tali swallowed. Quarians tended to bond tightly to their lifemates, with certain pheromones kicking off reactions in the other partner. These often ended up ensuring lifemates were just that, mates for life, and the word 'divorce' wasn't something quarians could grasp. But if the bonds were not completed, her body would keep trying to react as if she was seeking a mate.

She shivered. "How do you get by it?"

Kiala shrugged. "Black market injections of distilled pheromones. I don't plan to ever go back to the Flotilla..but your help in clearing my name would help me with access to quarian doctors. The black market versions aren't without side effects, but I can't get anything else."

Tali swallowed again. "If...if I get you the money, and access to the doctors on the Flotilla, can you get me .. what I need? The herbs, drugs...injections...and .. things?"

Kiala sighed and her voice was sour, but at least shorn of the vicious hate it had held earlier. "Against my better judgment, I feel for you. I've been where you are, and … yeah. Fine. I'll help you. Get you the medicines. You can pay for mine too, since I'm not exactly rich. I'll … give you the advice you need, but only as long as you listen and don't get mouthy."

Tali clasped her hands together tightly. "Thank you. Thank you..."

Kiala snorted. "Before you do anything else, you need a clean room and to get used to taking off your suit without having a panic attack. Start doing that now, don't wait, or you will freeze up the second your body stocking comes off. I did."

Tali bit her lip and listened, determined to make this work.

* * *

_**Kilmest'a: ** hero or heroine, used in a context of suggesting the title given is perhaps not deserved. Similar to 'hero of the hour'. _

_**tuho: **bitch, roughly._

_**hrarxal: **Blood - feud or death threat. Usually very serious. _

_**v'tha: **small dextro herbivorous animal commonly found among quarian liveships, very weak, frightened and shy. They aid in keeping the ecology of the liveship interior in balance. _

_**birth wound: **quarian term for vaginal orifice. Less offensive than cunt, but not clinical. _

_**vhgras: **deep sexual penetration. Quarian bodies have two vaginal chambers, the second only reached when sex is intended to cause pregnancy rather than merely hormonal balance. _

_**bahnt: **somewhat risque term for lover, with sexual connotations of satisfaction_


	12. Chapter 12 : Cleverness

_**A/N:** Delays due to personal issues. For a certain scene with extended laughter, imagine the Joker 'thirty seconds of laughter' clip.  
_

_Also, I need good setups for Lieutenant Cole to use the line "Please! Don't shake the lightbulb."_

_As always, if you have questions about some of what is referenced here, leave a review or PM and I will answer as fast as I can. :)_

_UPDATE : 10-22-14 - got Ylana and Yvael confused, the second time the undead have struck. Fixed. _

* * *

_'Victory and valor are not always nestmates. Duty is often sacrificing glory for goals.'  
_

_– _Saren Arterius , 'Dying for the Cause'__

* * *

The completion of the refits and training meant that the exhausted crew of Battle group Chiron could finally rest. Ahern's trainers had ruthlessly drilled the Kazan and the refitted and rebuilt destroyers and frigates of Battle group Chiron for three solid weeks, fifteen hours a day. The drills had covered various emergencies, likely combat damage and various system failures. By the time they were done, Shepard was very pleased with their reaction times and hard work.

The marines of the battlegroup had also been put through the ringer, and she had literally cackled with glee as Ahern gave her a report on their readiness.

"You have a good team of ass-kickers. I've sorted out Lieutenant Cole's problems as best I could, and I'm confident that your main fire-team is solid. The other marines are at least passable, probably at least as good the marines you had on the Normandy. Take my advice and drill your men often, Shepard, and they won't let you down."

She had shown up Friday afternoon, to watch the final exercises of the Kazan's own marines. Shepard watched with a smile of pride as Lieutenant Cole's squads soundly defeated a set of squads from the Pinnacle Training Command. Cole had taken to the hard training with frightening devotion, pulling longer hours than his NCO's and demonstrating more than a little of his father's endless energy and talent for morale-boosting speeches.

After they broke off from training, Shepard walked down to congratulate him and his men. "You all did a good job, Marines. You've done yourselves – and me – proud. Even the Admiral was impressed with your performance, and that old bastard is hard to impress. But I want you all to keep on the up-hop, because with my luck who knows what we'll run into."

Cole nodded, standing at parade rest. "We'll be ready ma'am. Any ideas exactly what our next assignment will be?"

Shepard shrugged. "Only a rough outline – final briefing will be at Arcturus. But from what little I know, we'll be sent to check out some pirate activity along the edge of the Traverse. The Navy sent a squadron to sniff around, but they didn't have Marine support and came back empty handed – and then another world got hit, so now people are pissed and we get to clean it up. It's probably batarians, so be ready."

Cole snorted. "Roger that, ma'am." He turned to face the marine squads, putting his hands on his hips. "You hear that, apes? Once again, it is our job to finish what the flyboys started. When we leave this big happy station and go off into the edge of space, we'll be fighting batarian bastards on solid ground. And when we meet the enemy, we will rip their skulls from their spines, and toss 'em away, laughing! Am I right, Marines?"

The marines hooted in laughter, and Shepard grinned. "Never change, Lieutenant. For now, hustle your boys and girls back to the ship for gear inspection, then cut yourselves leave for the rest of the day and the weekend."

Cole saluted sharply, then turned to his marines. "You heard the lady! Move like you've got a purpose." The marines stepped off sharply, leaving Shepard behind, and she headed over to the edge of the refit docks to gaze out at her newly repaired battle group.

The destroyers were fairly recent, only a few years old, and much of the refit had been repairing them back to battle spec from the beating they got at Terra Nova. Despite her wrangling with BuShips, she wasn't able to have their weapons overhauled, but Colms had been smartly resourceful in altering up the weapons even without new parts. Their missile systems had been expanded with clever sliding racks that extended from the cargo bays, and Colms had worked with Tali and Liara to create swarms of stealthed targeting drones to aid in missile and torpedo locks.

Her frigates,on the other hand, had been mostly torn apart and rebuilt from the bottom up. Two were now Normandy-style stealth frigates, loaded with a single Kyle-class torpedo and slightly stronger weapons. The armor was lighter to make room for modern cooling , ECM and electronic systems, but that also meant the ships were lighter and more maneuverable.

The rest of the frigates were upgraded to heavy missile frigates, loaded with rapid-fire missile banks and extra GARDIAN arrays to aid in knocking down enemy missile salvos. One of them also had fancy asari sensors, although Shepard had skimmed over the boring technical details – all she knew about it is the asari engineering staff had pissed Tali off something fierce, enough so that Liara had gone down and indicated her displeasure at the antics of the asari engineers, going so far as to suggest perhaps she should inform Clan Steelshape that their engineers had offended a member of the Thirty. The asari engineers ended up babbling horrified apologies to Liara and then to Tali at Liara's insistence.

_Heh, she's really getting into my bitchy streak. _

She turned away from the docks, and tapped her omni, checking in on the status of the battlegroup. She had to meet with the command team in an hour or so, to finalize last minute details on supplies, readiness and to meet her captains for the frigates and destroyers, along with making sure the lead captains were satisfied they were ready to move out. Once that was done she had the night off, before having to head into the main hub in the morning to get her ass beat by Ahern a final time.

After that, the last week would supposedly be spent in non-physical training – mostly damage control and repair drills for the crew, and final assessments from Ahern. That was going to be mostly spent resting and having the medics get strained tendons, pulled joints and torn muscles back up to snuff. She still didn't know if Ahern had more training for her in that final week – she hoped not, given how bruised up she already felt.

She had orders to take BG Chiron back to Arcturus for two weeks of leave before setting out to investigate the pirate activity she'd mentioned to Cole. The newly refitted ships had to be given a formal inspection by BuNavSafe, the safety and certification specialists, and new security software had to be on-loaded. Hopefully, some of the things she'd tasked Lieutenant Dallas to get would also be there.

There was also the little matter of the wedding. Anderson had dropped that news on her earlier in the day, and she was more than a bit nervous and worried about how it would all play out. Anderson was still pulling together details and arrangements with the help of Liara's father, but had asked her to talk to Jiong about a neutral, private location on Arcturus to hold the ceremony.

She was about to head off to find her Commissar and ask him that when omni chimed, displaying the gold framing and sigil indicating a high priority call from the Citadel Council.

"Shit."

She hastily tapped out a reply, saying she'd be in communication with them in ten minutes, and then called up an aircar.

She took seven minutes to get back to the Kazan, and got to her stateroom and it's secure comm suite as quickly as she could. She straightened her uniform, then hastily ran her fingers through her messy hair before sighing and hitting the comm-link controls.

The blue-tinted images the Council appeared on the gray disk set into the floor, the faces of Valern, Sparatus and Tevos familiar and in their 'frowny neutral' expressions as normal. Seeing Udina and a small quarian male in a robe over his environmental suit brought a smile to her face. "I am very sorry for the delay, Councilors... I was in training. This link is secure."

Sparatus flicked an mandible, his voice actually approving. He wore a long black robe with a turian honor sash today, and his voice was actually calm. "No need to apologize for drilling your soldiers, Spectre. That you still take the time to see to such things personally is praiseworthy."

_Did he just … complement me? Must be drunk._

Shepard said nothing but folded her arms behind her, and the turian went back to his usual grumpy glare. Tevos traded a glance with Valern, and more interestingly with Udina, before she spoke, dressed in a mix of plain white silk with some kind of shawl as usual, her voice a touch distant and cool.

_Probably still pissed at me for calling her out on that shit she pulled with Telanya. _

"Shepard, we have a rather cryptic situation developing that may require your services. We have investigated the turian colony at Lenal that you discovered was overrun. A further inspection of the site, with Officer Vakarian taking the lead, has uncovered strange linkages to other involved parties. It appears there is a disturbing intersection between the activities of one Doctor Saleon, a salarian criminal engaged in nefarious organ trafficking, and the events on Lenal."

Udina spoke next. "Shepard, they found _salarian_ Thorian thralls aboard Saleon's ship. The colonists on Feros were primarily Penal Legion failures, and while there was one salarian believed to be at Feros there were not twenty five. We are unsure of where these particular thralls originated from, which means a third Thorian could be active."

Sparatus made a 'throw away' gesture with his hands and grunted. "Vakarian also found an indoctrinated turian on Saleon's ship, one from Lenal, as well as strange batarian slave brands using a script and symbols similar to the images you described seeing on Virmire when you … talked … to Nazara."

The turian put his arms behind his back, voice stern. "C-SEC's Financial Analysis teams and a Spectre are already investigating the money trail, but it appears some of Benezia's subordinates and possibly some of Saren's followers are still active. The tie to the Batarian Hegemony is especially troubling, given their lack of meaningful communication from the Emperor in recent months."

Valern folded his arms, robed as usual, lights gleaming off his STG bracers. "We have no hard proof of batarian involvement, of course, but the implications are … disturbing. In light of this, we wish you to investigate an area where Saren was very active prior to the Benezia Incident, in the edges of the Traverse near or within the Xalax Cluster. We have fragmentary data indicating some of Saren and Benezia's followers may have fallen back to this location, and financial transactions linking both Okeer and Saleon to one Matron Ylana Anora of Moondance."

Shepard nodded. "Liara recognized that name, Okeer said it on the memory chip we found. She said that this Ylana was one of her mother's advisers."

Tevos spoke again, nodding. "That is correct. Ylana was also Benezia's acolyte in the Art for centuries, and the one who handled most of her financial planning. According to Rana Thanoptis, Ylana was kept as far from Nazara as possible to minimize her level of indoctrination, but it is likely all the same she was affected. While no where near as dangerous as Benezia herself – she had no commando training and was not a full priestess – she is liable to be dangerous nonetheless, especially if she had any remaining funds of Benezia's or the resources of even a fragment of the Triune."

Shepard nodded again. "Operating out in the Traverse will be a little tricky with a whole battlegroup, Councilors, especially if I'm trying to hunt down one system out of a cluster. I don't exactly have the Normandy to be sneaky in, and while I have a stealth frigate it's more of a hack job than a polished final product."

The quarian spoke for the first time. "I have never worked with you, Spectre. I am Thin'Koris vas Seya, the quarian councilor. Our own ships, which are less likely to cause adverse reactions in the Traverse, have attempted to scout the systems in the area, but are unsure which system or planet Ylana may be hiding on. We estimate it would take us another fifteen days or so to pin down all the transmission locations and finalize her actual location."

Udina spoke again. "Shepard, I've gotten word from your superiors that you will be in that area of the Traverse anyway, investigating pirate activity. Given the involvement of batarian pirates on some level with whatever this Ylana is up to, the missions from the Alliance and the Council should dovetail and provide a cover story. By the time you are done with training and what I understand will be a short leave period, the quarian fleet should have pinned down her location. You will strike there first with the full power of your Battlegroup. With any luck, if you move quickly, no one in the Traverse will know you are acting on such a target, and then you can move onto whatever other tasks the SA has assgined you."

Shepard nodded. "Understood. The idea that batarians and Okeer are involved with anything Saren and Benezia were into is … scary. Pointy face bastard is causing trouble even after he's dead. Did you find out any more about the Shadow Broker's involvement?"

Valern looked upset. "No. All attempts at communication have been curiously rebuffed. And even those outside the light of the law, such as the Shifter and P., have not been able to contact him. Until we can be sure the Shadow Broker was acting to derail Okeer's plans, not to profit from them, we recommend assuming he is possibly hostile."

Shepard nodded sourly at that. The Broker's so-called help hadn't amounted to very much beyond getting the Councilors to actually listen to her, but that didn't mean the spooky bastard wasn't dangerous. Based on what Wrex told her, she figured the Broker was doing the same thing the Council was – trying to learn more about the Reapers and their technology.

_Speaking of which …_

"What sort of planning has been done regarding the Reapers?"

Sparatus sighed. "Very little. It has only been a month, and all races are still busy repairing damage to our worlds and fleets. Given our estimates, we will certainly accelerate shipbuilding efforts by next year or maybe the year after that, but anything else will need to wait until we can at least get back on our feet from the damage already taken – not to mention we need time to analyze the wreckage of Nazara."

She didn't like that answer, but the dour looks on the faces of Tevos and even Udina told her she'd have to accept it. "As long as we don't loose sight of the danger."

Thin'Koris tilted his head, his glowing eyes narrowing. "We have not, but we must also remember that there are other dangers. Our primary focus now should be the elimination of the geth while they are weakened. They served as the vanguard of this Nazara thing, and my people feel that it is unwise to give them time to recover, now that everyone sees the evil and danger they represent."

Udina coughed. "The Systems Alliance is hesitant to act on many fronts, but the threat of the geth is one we will be addressing in the very near future. Their vile acts against our colonies are intolerable."

Tevos made a gesture of siari resolution. "That is a discussion for another day, and one Shepard can attend to at another time."

Shepard shrugged. "What about backup?"

Sparatus frowned, folding his arms. "I believe you have an entire battle-group at your disposal now, do you not? Surely that is enough backup to merely investigate and strike a small group of no doubt weak troublemakers. Given the condition of the Council Fleet at this time, I don't feel we can make any additional contributions."

Shepard was about to say something when Thin'Koris spoke. "We are also recovering, plus already taking part in this endeavor...but Admiral Rael'Zorah has stated that we can provide a few companies of the Migrant Fleet Marines in support if needed."

Valern gave a shrug. "We have provided the quarians with two STG units to support their intelligence gathering efforts. There is, I am afraid, little else we can do at this time. Much of the salarian fleet is at the Solus Docks in refit from the battle."

Udina gave a tired sigh. "I see very little has changed in terms of getting this Council to provide any sort of assistance..."

Tevos looked at Shepard a long time before speaking. "I believe you were quiet … direct in our last conversation about certain appropriate actions. I do not wish to have a state of antagonism between us. Therefore, the Asari Republic will be supporting your strike against Ylana. Spectre Tela Vasir, in her capacity as a member of the Hunter's Circle, and her strike cruiser, _Stormwind's Spirit, _will be accompanying you. Vasir is one of our best, and she will be traveling with a small unit of commandos and war priestesses."

Sparatus and Valern looked surprised, but there was little to be said. Most military Spectres retained their position in their own race's military, and Tevos was dispatching Tela Vasir as an asari asset, not a Council one.

Shepard smiled faintly at that. It was certainly better than nothing, and a force like Tevos was describing was actual real backup, not a handout. Maybe Tevos wasn't a complete idiot.

She noticed Sparatus scowling, and her smile faded slightly. The others hadn't changed much...

She had a brief image of Sparatus throwing up air quotes, and Udina braining him with a datapad, and had to smother a fresh smile. "Thank you for the support, Councilor Tevos. And I do understand the Council's limits in the aftermath of the attack by … Benezia. I will contact you when I am ready to set out. I have a few events at Arcturus to take care of first."

Udina coughed. "Yes, I have been informed. Do the words 'political shitstorm' mean anything to you, Shepard, or do you merely delight in running up my blood pressure?"

The other councilors all had looks of confusion on their faces, so Shepard didn't say much. "That is probably best discussed another time, sir."

Udina rolled his eyes. "Yes, it will be. We will be in contact, Major." The signal cut, displaying the new modified sigil of the Council , the stylized tower with the outlines of the four capital planets and a quarian liveship at it's base.

Shepard walked over to sit at her desk, lost in thought. She didn't know how the pieces tied together – indoctrinated turians, Okeer, krogan experiments, this Ylana bitch, batarian slavers, a salarian organ clone doctor, and salarian plant zombies – but it sounded bad.

She had figured that by killing Saren, Benezia and seeing Nazara destroyed, the threat was delayed. Not over. Maybe never over, if the Vision was correct, with a thousand black leaves falling out of the sky. But it would not happen tomorrow, or next year. They had time to prepare. That didn't mean that whatever Ylana was trying to pull couldn't end up being as bad as Benezia's plans.

She glanced at the chronometer on the wall, and decided to shower and eat before heading down to meet with her captains.

O-ATTWN-O

As with all staff meetings, Shepard strove to keep things simple, informal,and most of all brief. Several of the captains answering to her now had been flying ships when she was just a kid, and she did her best to make it clear she would listen to their concerns and advice when offered. The meeting room they met in was one of the base's larger rooms, rather than having them all slog over to the Kazan. It was comfortable and had a coffee machine, which was a nice touch.

God knew listening to hours of repair reviews, readiness evaluations, and status reports required coffee to keep her awake.

The three destroyer captains gave a lengthy and somewhat boring rundown on their ships. They were fully loaded and ready for battle, and their crews were confident in their state of repair and durability. The three destroyers would provide her flanking 'punch' when it came to a larger battle, holding the enemy in place so the big guns and heavy missile and torpedo salvos of the Kazan could crack the enemy hulls and defenses.

The frigate captains, on the other hand, were more concerned. Major changes had happened to their ships, and they felt a good shakedown run would be necessary to catalog issues for further attention. She told them to do limited shakedown ops over the next week, and to present a list of things that were showstoppers to her by no later than Wednesday.

She didn't really have a coherent use for the frigates yet. Her own experience in the Normandy convinced her that frigates could be nasty customers in a fight, but these frigates were no where near as nimble, powerful or cutting edge as the Normandy had been. She had a rough idea from her training with Ahern of how to deploy frigates as either pressure units or scouts, but the heavy missile frigates were better suited to holding position near her own cruiser, given their slower speed.

She and the captains hashed out simple responses for likely issues, and then moved on to their marine teams, fighters, and support units. All of those were also in order, and Shepard relaxed a little.

"Any other concerns, while you've all got my attention?"

The oldest of the frigate captains, Commander Kenneth Boermann, spoke up. "I have a concern, although one I'm not sure you'll appreciate. You've gone from commanding a single experimental frigate and a detachment to eight ships and four companies in a short amount of time. Many of us have more naval experience than you. How closely do you plan to provide command guidance on a naval or ground level, given that we're more experienced than you?"

Shepard smirked. Well, at least one of her captains had a spine, that was good to know. "Commander Boermann, there's two answers to that question. The first is simple – I'm in charge of the battlegroup and the Kazan. The reason you are all here is that I do not have the time to micromanage your ships or your marine groups. I expect you, your XO or your BDO to have the chops to manage your own marine commands, and that you know how to fight your ships better than I can. I never liked some REMF getting in my way and I doubt any of you want that, so most of the time my orders will be fleet level coordination."

She leaned forward, palms down on the table of the meeting room. "The other answer is more complex. How long have you been in service, Commander?"

Boermann frowned. "Eighteen years."

She smiled back at him. "I've been in just over nine years. I've been awarded the Star of Terra twice, the Medal of Valor four fucking times, and I've ended up being command advanced at every rank. I was appointed to this post by the President himself, with approval from Fleet Master Dragunov. I am _**better**_ than you. If I wasn't, you'd be sitting here instead of me. On the rare occasion I give you an order, I expect you to follow it promptly and without giving me any static."

She glanced around the room. Boermann looked taken aback, while the younger CO's looked a bit awed and Von Khar amused. She leaned back, smiling. "I understand your concerns. But I've been in command of a frigate for the past year in some of the craziest fights in space or on the ground you can imagine, and I'm not about to give reckless orders. Most of the orders will be coming from my XO, Commander Pressly, who has been in for a lot longer than I have."

She fixed her gaze on Boermann. "If you have concerns about my orders, given my lack of experience with heavy units or battalion level forces, I'm willing to listen and take any advice you may have. If you have concerns given my past actions and the number of marines I lost in battle, however, I strongly recommend getting over them. That won't happen again."

She glanced around a second time, smiling wider. "If that's all, we all have things to be about. Dismissed. Captain von Khar, stay a moment. I have a … concern of my noble rank to discuss with you."

Von Khar's graying eyebrows rose, but he stayed seated, waiting until the rest of the group had exited . His voice shifted from the usual drawl and plain language to the more refined tones and phrases of the Forms of Address. "I am at your disposal, Baroness. I must admit I did not expect you to engage your title for any reason in the near future, given your background."

Shepard smiled. She'd had some lessons with Jiong on handling the nobility, and while the formality that nobles used when talking about what Jiong called 'noble obligations' was stupid, it was also something she could memorize, unlike most forms of human communication.

She cleared her throat."That is to be expected, milord. I am hardly what one could expect to find in the ranks of the Noble Families of Earth." Her voice took on a rueful note. "I would also point out I have a title, but no lands, and that my status as a 'defender' is not an actual knighthood until the Court of Lords receives me and approves."

Captain von Khar nodded thoughtfully. "Salient points, milady. I assume you have some question as to proprieties or the like?"

Shepard laughed. "You could say that." She sighed. "I'm not familiar with any of this, and my commissar has done his best to train me. Given that it's only been a few weeks, I've only managed to make sure I have memorized the Forms of Address and the concept that random cursing is not acceptable. My worries are larger."

She exhaled. "I would like to ask your word, in that you will not repeat what I am about to say."

The captain leaned back. "You saved my ship from being flung into certain doom, milady. I give you my word freely."

Shepard folded her arms. "I am going to marry Liara T'Soni upon our return to Arcturus. I need to know how the Noble Families will react, milord."

Given the magnitude of the news, Shepard was surprised the older man's features didn't flicker. "I see. I can only presume, given the fact she is your subordinate officer aboard the Kazan, that the Commissariat has given you some … allowance for prohibited fraternization, and that the Admiralty is aware?"

Shepard nodded. "Our relationship was something that happened before Liara took a commission with the Alliance. And yes, both groups are fully aware. I'm not concerned about the media, or the asari reaction, or even that of the military. But the Noble Families are a blank slate to me. I was a Z2 restricted felon less than two months ago. It is going to be difficult to get any of them to acknowledge me."

Captain von Khar shifted in his chair. "I have a question that is both pertinent in topic but impertinent in audacity, milady. Is this a match made for love, or is this a political marriage for your own benefit?"

Shepard sighed. "Love is there, but … it was advised for me to marry her by the Commissariat, both to secure my position and to protect Liara from certain asari reactions to the treason of her mother." She paused. "If it was up to me, it wouldn't be a public thing. I love her, but the only reason I'm making this into a public event is for the protection it provides Liara."

He smiled. "Then at the very least I certainly approve. Too many matches are for love without any thought of the larger ramifications, and if you are doing this both out of your desire and your duty, not to mention protecting Lady Liara, then few can fault you for such."

Shepard smiled. "Thank you, milord. And the families?"

Captain von Khar nodded thoughtfully. "My family is one of the oldest of the Houses of the Second Rank, just out of sight of the Court of Lords itself. The Lord General of the _Solguard _is my brother, for example. I cannot say with any certainty how the High Lords of Sol will react. The Coleman family, for example, is split between those who adore the asari, and those who despise them. Certainly the Eldfell Family will support you, as will, I suppose, the Windsors."

He coughed. "Given your relationship with General von Grath, milady, I have no doubt the von Graths will stand in support, and many of the Houses of the Third Rank that you will stand among will support you for no other reason than solidarity. The noble families of Watson will likely approve, given their own liasons to asari of Lesser Houses."

His eyes flicked up to meet hers. "As long as you are quiet, do not move in any circles of nobility, and are careful to stay out of the public eye, few of the Noble Families will care. You will not be the first to take the hand of an asari noble, although you will be the first to do so with one ostensibly of the Thirty. Many will seek to approach you for gain in dealings with the asari."

She nodded. "This is still … overwhelming and weird to me. I'm glad to know I won't make any more enemies by doing this, though."

She stood, and he did so as well, shrugging. "As a senior member of your command, I can only wish you congratulations and happy returns of the day. As marquis, I would suggest that you remember the rule my father taught me when it came to interactions with our peers, milady – the less you are seen, the less likely you are to be plotted against."

She dismissed him and he left, as she wondered again how the fuck she'd gotten into this mess in the first place.

O-ATTWN-O

The Saturday 'free-for-all' sessions, where Ahern challenged Shepard and selections of her team, had never ceased to be hard. Shepard usually ran three of them every Saturday – one with Liara and Tali, one with Beta Squad, and one with Vega and the two DACT.

So far, she had not beaten the man even a single time. Ahern still wore a shitty Onyx suit of basic marine armor, a old omnitool, and used mostly just a pistol, grenades, and info-war programs. Her respect for the man rose immensely as the weeks rolled by, and his vitriol and cursing became slowly more friendly. He was deadly accurate, had reactions like a salarian on speed, and used every bit of his skill to hold his own no matter what she threw at him.

Ahern, like Rachael, fought using concepts and tactics which were unexpected and reactive. He'd survived things that frankly sounded like flat out suicide missions more than once because he refused to simply follow the existing tactics and created his own. He drilled her men on precision, on thinking on their feet, and on eschewing heroism for pragmatism.

As time went by, the Saturday sessions became less of a humiliating beating and more of a nearly impossible challenge. Every time she hit the dirt or shuddered as Ahern drove his omniblade an inch from her face, she swore she'd beat him the next time. She couldn't get angry, or he'd turn it against her. If she relied too much on any one aspect of her skills – biotics, guns, info-war – he would use it as an opening, or force her to overextend.

Still, she could see her progress. She'd prided herself on her snap-accuracy with a shotgun and her kanquess, but had let many of her other skills slip. Looking back over the past few years of her life, she saw where she'd let anger, despair or fear of losing those entrusted to her push her away from being a good soldier and more into being a wrecking ball.

With Liara tied to her, she couldn't afford to do such things. She had to stay alive, not risk death. She had to focus and lead a force totaling over fifteen hundred people, every one of which looked up to her with a firm belief that she was indestructible. She had to not only push herself to be a better soldier, but a better officer, a better leader, a better friend.

Part of that 'getting better' idea meant putting her foot up Ahern's ass, and she was going to do it today. She felt the past week had not only improved her skills a great deal, but both Liara and Tali. Together, they were going to take the old man down.

When morning came, Shepard and Liara had a quick breakfast in the wardroom of the Kazan before heading down to their usual meeting spot just outside the Pinnacle training grounds. The training area Ahern usually favored was a wide concrete training yard, a good hundred feet square, with a handful of low concrete barriers along it's edges and in the middle.

Shepard and Liara waited a few minutes before Tali showed up, muttering about something to do with lubricants. Shepard decided not to ask. They entered the training area proper, and Shepard frowned at the changes.

Rather than the clean square of concrete they were used to, the training field had been covered in … mess. New pillboxes and concrete barriers formed a maze of cover, trailing along the left side of the practice area. In the middle of the training area was a mass of construction debris, metallic panels from ship hulls, and stacks of scrap metal filled in gaps between bulky metallic storage crates. The right and bottom corner of the field was dominated by low walls of concrete, encircling the empty hulk of an older ALASKA-class shuttle The upper left of the field was dominated by what looked like pieces of a pre-fab building, four heavy walls on the ground floor with cutouts, and a narrow staircase leading up to a second floor with two walls and some sandbags.

There was usually no one watching these fights except a pair of medics. This time, though, to the right of the practice field, behind a glowing kinetic barrier field, stood a collection of admirals and several Commissars she didn't recognize. Behind them, and looking somewhat nervous, were Jiong and Susan.

Finally, off to the left side of the area, there was a MAKO medvac conversion vehicle, armor removed to allow for more internal space. Standing beside it were Dr. Sedanya and most of her medical squad along with several other medical personnel.

Shepard arched an eyebrow at all the changes. "Well, that's probably not good. We never have an audience to our ass beatings, or that many doctors."

Liara frowned slightly, glancing around. "Perhaps since this is the final attempt, he is attempting to pressure us by having watchers." She gave a small shrug.

Shepard spent several seconds looking around as well, still seeing no sign of Ahern, only the jumbled terrain of the training area. She narrowed her eyes before muttering to herself. "Helmets on, girls, the Grand High Bastard may be trying something."

Liara nodded, while Tali tapped her foot. "Sara, I always have my helmet on."

Shepard gave a small laugh, nodding. "Sorry. I'm just so happy after this I can relax and go soak in a damned hot tub or something when we get back to Arcturus that I'm babbling. That's … probably not a good sign,is it?" She carefully checked her weapons as the three of them advanced, eyes open for trouble.

As they reached the edge of the practice field, a black-armored form stepped out from behind one of the stacks of metal scrap. It was a suit of super-heavy Devastator armor, with glowing-bright omni-armor covering the chest, shins, shoulders, forearms and back.

Built in mini-missile launchers bulked on one arm, while the other was surmounted by an additional omnishield. The figure held a deadly looking matte-black Sabre rifle in one hand, and the belt was festooned with grenades. The armor was one of the most advanced in the SA lineup. It's edgy, angled shapes broke up radar returns, and the suit was specially designed to conceal body heat – even with special padding on the feet to hide the heat of footprints.

In short, it would be a bitch to take out the wearer.

Red haptic lighting, angular and jagged, set off the edges of the suit, and the figure tapped a control with it's left hand, the helmet sliding back and apart to reveal the face of Admiral Ahern.

"Welcome, ladies, to the final set of evaluations you will be doing with me. After five weeks, you have either learned what I have attempted to teach you … or you are mindless idiots that should be spaced via the nearest airlock. Since the three of you are no longer _completely_ incompetent, I'm assuming you have actually learned something, and thus, I will be coming at you today with more than a pistol and a set of Onyx armor."

He gestured around him to the set-pieces of the practice area. "As you can see, things have been changed up a bit. The purpose of this evolution is twofold. First of all, I will be assessing your progress in picking up on what you've been trained on in the past month. Secondly, given that Ms. Zorah and Dr. T'Soni don't actually possess a combat rating, this will serve as your 303-A1 qualification for basic A-Rating MCV. Since all A1 ratings tests are done with live fire, this test will also follow that. Try to aim for legs and not heads. Once we start, a force screen will prevent wild shots from going outside of the area."

He gestured to their equipment. "You are unlimited in your usage of equipment, with the following exceptions – no use of any form of toxic or environmentally dangerous attacks. You will be expected to demonstrate accuracy, combat tactics, teamwork, and precision."

Shepard nodded. "Yes, sir. Mission, op-for and level of exercise?"

Ahern smiled. "Your goal is fairly simple. In the pre-fab construction over there is a table with a datapad on it. The contents of the datapad simulate critical intelligence that must be obtained at all costs."

He pointed back at the shuttle. "The mission starts inside the shuttle hulk over there, simulating a real shuttle. You must get from the shuttle to the building, secure the data and get back to the shuttle. Once on board, you must remain 'alive' for at least fifteen seconds to simulate the shuttle powering up for an escape. If you get away with one of you still standing, you win. If all three of you go down, or the padd is destroyed by one of you, you lose."

"The only opposing force you will have in this simulation is me. This is a full level five exercise. That means there is the possibility, however slight, of serious injury, or even death. You can decline at any time."

He waited for the three of them to nod before continuing with a wintry smile, and gestured to the officers observing to one side. "If you succeed, then my report to the handful of REMF's supervising this fiasco will state that you are all excellent combatants, fully prepared to take down anything you might come across, and that I have full confidence in your abilities. Furthermore, I'll even stick my own name on the line saying I have no reservations about the situation with you and LTC T'Soni."

Shepard nodded. "And if we fail?"

Ahern's smile widened. "If you fail, then I will tell them that you three couldn't find your asses with both hands in your back pockets. There will be some questions you have to answer to the satisfaction of the Board of Naval Performance and the Commissariat about your fitness for this job. You can already fucking imagine what that entails, Shepard."

He tapped his collar, which reformed his helmet around his head, deforming his voice. "So don't fuck this up. I swear to God and the Pope that if you go out like that limp-wristed loser Delacor and his team did when I tested him, I will put my foot so far up your ass you'll need adult diapers for the rest of your goddamned life, Shepard."

She exhaled, remembering the lessons he'd drilled and beaten into her head, before nodding. "Understood, sir."

He lifted his Sabre. "Get to the shuttle. The exercise begins when the flare goes off, but the officer will be waiting for your signal to launch it." He tapped his omni and faded from view, and Shepard jerked her head to the shuttle.

As they ran, Shepard clicked into her private comm channel with Liara, tying Tali in. "Listen up, something stupid is going down since we're being observed, and we're going to end this with a bang to stop it. We have a single, hard target, the padd. We are going to have cross the entire field to get to it, so expect Ahern to start with trying to snipe us and flush us out of cover, and some kind of mines to cut off our approach."

She exhaled. "Liara, Tali, work together and combine your defenses to draw him right. I'll use a series of smoke grenades with charge to work left, but I expect him to counter that pretty quick."

She entered the shuttle, turning around to face them. "When he does, he'll have to come out of that building to stop me from getting too close. Liara, tie him up with your biotics, Tali, bracket his ass with as much confusion as you can, and lots of grenades. Don't let him stealth and circle. Move together towards the pre-fab while I try and circle to draw him out and away from the building."

She glanced outside, where an officer was prepping a signal flare, and he nodded, waiting for her to signal him.

She grimaced. "We can't beat him head up. We haven't so far and trying it now is what he'll expect. We'll have to be sneaky. He said we had to get the data, not the padd. When I draw him away from the building, Tali will go for the padd. Read it remotely, then fall back. Once you're secure, beam the data to my omni-tool. Liara will pull his attention off me. I'll do a couple of biotic charges to the shuttle while you two keep him off me. We win."

Liara and Tali both nodded. Shepard gestured to the officer with the flare, shouting as the signal flare went off. "Go!"

Liara took the lead, throwing out a weak singularity and anchoring two wide, but fairly flimsy, barrier fields to it. The blue ball dragged them along at just above head height as she ducked down behind narrow concrete walls, Tali following and putting up a recon drone that was protected by the floating barrier fields.

The barrier blocked a probing shot from long range, and Liara smiled at her biotic invention. The combination of a scouting drone and biotic protections meant Ahern couldn't take out the drone without clearly revealing his position. His armor made the IR and other sensor suites in their helmets and omni-tools useless, and the drone's specialized sensors were their only chance of picking him up before he got within what he liked to call 'beat down range'.

Shepard waited with her sniper drawn, waiting to see if he'd try to take out the drone with something more concrete than sniper fire. The drone, meanwhile, spun to acquire the source of the shot, flickering through infrared and radio emissions before catching a weak vibration return on Ahern near the pre-fab.

Tali hissed. "Target is near building, north side, moving west."

Shepard nodded, shipping her sniper and drawing her ODIN instead. She flashed into the kanquess, coming out of her charge behind a taller wall about halfway to the pre-fab, south and east of its location. She immediately pulled at her belt, dropping smoke grenades and doing another charge at an oblique angle to the right.

No sooner than she had, six homing grenades lanced out of the pre-fab to bounce towards her former position, each one going up in a mix of explosive, frags, and EMP bursts. Shepard tucked into cover behind a tall stack of armor panels and tapped her comm. "Tali, go." She shipped the ODIN again, redrawing her sniper rifle, and waited for an opening.

Tali did so, stopping to disarm a tech mine that blocked the right side approach to the pre-fab. She used her drone as a decoy, sending it higher, while creating two more and having them creep along the ground. She grinned as Ahern blasted the drone out of the air, pinpointing his location for her. "Liara, he's south of the prefab, near the big wall with a construction pillar leaning against it."

Liara popped up out of cover long enough to throw a strong pull at the wall Tali described. It buckled and collapsed, throwing up dust and ruining Ahern's cover. Liara ducked back down, but Shepard moved around to her right, trying to line up a shot with her sniper. She couldn't make out Ahern moving in the dust cloud, and edged out a bit more to get in range for a grenade through.

Shepard winced as a high-powered sniper shot smashed into her shields. The second shot detonated unexpectedly, sending her rolling to find new cover and hissing in pain as burning fragments from the round riddled her shoulder.

Liara caught sight of the form of Ahern, dashing through cover, and focused. A series of white-limned blobs appeared in his path, and he crashed into several of the stasis bubbles. The armor strained and whined before he tore himself free, but that allowed Liara to hammer him with a blast of warpfire strong enough to cook the back of his armor and blast away two of the omni-fields protecting him.

Ahern fired off mini-missiles from his wrist, hammering Liara's barrier and forcing her back into heavier cover. She withdrew, triggering her own drones to fly up and spray Ahern's location with burst fire. As expected, the admiral was too tucked into cover for him to be affected, but that wasn't the goal anyway.

Tali targeted the area he was in with several thrown EMP grenades, before having one of her two concealed drones come up high and fire off a flight of mini-missiles – she'd coded them back in just the day before, to throw Ahern off. The admiral's shields flickered and died, and he grunted as he managed to dive away from the blast, being peppered by shots from Liara's pistol as he did so, and was forced backwards and away from the pre-fab further by the mini-missiles.

Shepard used the confusion of the explosions to charge ahead again, coming up a good thirty feet short of the pre-fab building in an elevated section of tumbled beams and concrete slabs. She pulled out her sniper rifle and began hunting for a shot.

She caught a flash of movement and fired, cursing as the image shattered into fractal static – a decoy. Knowing what was likely to happen, she hustled backwards from her shooting position, trying to find new cover and get down from the elevated area she was on. But even as she was moving, a handful of grenades tumbled to a halt below her, exploding violently and sending her crashing down as the unstable rubble she stood on shifted.

A sniper shot rang out a moment later, blasting through her barrier but missing her by inches, and she rolled flat on the ground before dropping the sniper and pulling grenades of her own. She'd not had a lot of time to fiddle with new weapons ideas with all the work she had been doing, but Ahern's training had given her one good idea, and the grenades she threw at him were it's execution. They bounced and exploded with a muted bang, splashing omnigel in long thin strands that rapidly hardened, turning the gap between the prefab and surrounding cover into a mess of iron-hard strands of gel as thick as a finger.

An omnitool lit up, and she grinned as Ahern cut himself free while he cursed loudly. Wasting no time, she washed burning warpfire over a heavy steel I-beam, and hurled it all at him with her strongest throw, followed by a charge to flanking cover.

As she expected, he tore free and dove away from the I-beam, coming up in front of her just as she came out of charge and opened fire on him with her ODIN. He jerked back, shields splintering, but his heavy omni-reinforced armor took the blast. Spinning with the force of the blow, he brought up his hand and jets of ice-cold omnigel splashed over her legs, similar to her own use of omni-gel, trying to freeze her in place.

She found herself stuck but didn't panic, instead smoothly launching her biotics at the ground and flinging herself away. She landed roughly, skidding into a pile of metal sheeting, and winced as bursts from his Sabre tore into the area around her. This was followed by bursts of mini-missiles, sending shards of debris crashing into her painfully.

She couldn't let up, though, and decided on a new trick. Ahern had ducked back towards the prefab, and she decided he couldn't stop what he couldn't see. She'd just managed to perfect a new biotic ability and she reached out with it, biting her lip to focus on maintaining control.

As more rounds poured into her location, one striking her shoulder armor and jolting her, she used a smear invocation on the scattered rubble around her, breaking it into smaller, easier to hurl pieces. With a yell she lashed out with a shockwave, picking it all up and breaking it into smaller tumbling fragments, then used push to spray it in a long cone towards where she thought Ahern was.

She made a big flare of biotic energy by blowing out her barrier, as if she'd charged, and then ducked back down right where she was, picking up her sniper again. The dust and mess from her debris attack concealed her, and sure enough Ahern rolled free of the mess, having dropped an omni-barrier to block some of it and scanning around to her right for where she would have charged to.

She sighted in on his knee, knowing that was one of the thinner spots on a set of Devastator armor, and fired. The shot blew through his shields and splintered against his armor, catching him by surprise. Shepard cursed as his reaction even as he went down was to fling grenades at her location.

She tried rolling away as he had, but was not able to get clear before they blew up around her, blasting her into a rag-doll tumble across the area and into a heap on the ground. She staggered to her feet, triggering her omni-shield and trying to get to cover, when more Sabre fire punched into her. The shield blocked a couple of shots before it sparked and died, and his fifth shot clipped her side and punched through.

She snarled and managed to get off a weak shockwave, deliberately slowing it's usual speed so it didn't really knock him back so much as simply hold him in place for a moment. He shook his head, and sighted in on her with his Sabre. Even as he did that, however, a mixed barrage of shockwaves and spinning singularities washed over him from an elevated angle, detonating the remains of Shepard's shockwave, sending the admiral himself sprawling and his rifle flying.

Anchored to a high beam of construction material by her biotics, a wall invocation firmly in front of her, Liara shoved a titanic lift at the prone Ahern, tearing the concrete apart with the force of it and sending him skittering back away from the pre-fab. She followed it with a second throw, but there was no blast of biotic energy from his location, and he'd ducked out of sight.

Tali's voice muttered quietly in Shepard's ear. "Shepard, I'm hacking the padd now. The bosh'tet krinai encrypted it. Breaking it will take some time. I need thirty seconds."

Liara's voice was tense as she dropped from her wide-open position to cover. "Hurry, Tali. Shepard is hurt, and the Admiral must have dropped a pulse suppression grenade at his feet, since there was no biotic explosion after my second throw."

Shepard gritted her teeth and forced her legs to respond, lunging into cover behind a nearby barricade. She was missing her sniper rifle, and thus pulled out her Sunfire pistol. "Tali, make sure you're dug in. Liara, back her up. I'll keep him drawn."

With that she glanced around, trying to find Ahern. "Tali...slave that scout drone of yours to me."

A beep from her omnitool followed a second later, and she glanced at the scan results. Ahern had kicked off the thermal cooling system on his suit, further eliminating his heat signature, and the motion tracker showed nothing.

The bastard was cloaked, then, going for a sniper shot. "Stay low-"

A crack lanced out, and Liara fell back, cradling her arm, her defensive barrier dying and a splash of purple blood leaking from her elbow. She reacted with haste, hurling out a singularity at the location, followed by a string of rapid shots from her pistol.

Ahern flashed out of his position, kicking off of a nearby wall about fifteen feet west of the pre-fab to literally fling himself through the air. The singularity tugged at him but couldn't slow him long enough to make him vulnerable. The shots Liara fired all missed badly, and he came down in a roll, popping up and flinging two disc grenades at Liara.

Shepard opened fire with the Sunfire, hammering as many shots at Ahern as she could, but the older man was too fast and her shots missed just as badly as Liara's had, seeming to curve off towards the fading singularity to smash holes into the side of the pre-fab.

Ahern juked left as the grenades he'd thrown at Liara exploded, and even from her distance Shepard felt the faint pins-and-needles effect of a biotic pulse dissipator. She fired twice more, trying to force him back from Liara, even as she circled around, moving to both flank him and place herself a bit closer to the shuttle. Ahern didn't rise to the bait, moving towards where Tali was tucked away, still hacking, even as he kept up the fire on Liara.

Tali's voice hissed as she cursed over the comm. "Need more time!"

Liara managed to crawl back into cover as Ahern riddled her position with burst fire from his Saber, several shots punching through her armor. She was clearly still affected by the pulse suppression grenade. But she was still in the fight, gamely pulling out her custom pistol and shifting it to shotgun mode, lifting it with her unhurt arm and burst firing back at Ahern as she tried to tuck herself as tightly as possible against her cover.

Her aim with only one arm was terrible but flecks of burning metal pinged and ricocheted around Ahern. He staggered with one hit, stumbling as one of the glowing omni-panels of his armor flickered and went dark. A second blast blew out the omni-armor on his left shin, and he ducked past a third, rushing forward and in cover to close the distance on Liara.

Liara's last shot missed, and Ahern slapped the shotgun-pistol out of her hand. Shepard gritted her teeth as Liara desperately tried to fend off the larger Ahern in close quarters combat. Her first couple moves were good, ducking under a spin kick and turning a knife-hand strike against him, but her throw failed when Ahern simply overpowered her. Still without her biotics, she was helpless as he wrenched her wounded arm, then disarmed her and his omnitool flicked out, scoring her armor across the chest and 'killing' her.

Shepard wanted to charge in and crush the admiral for hurting Liara – the bastard didn't have to twist her arm like that – but she knew he was waiting for that. Instead she smiled when Tali cheered. "Done. Transmitting. I'll draw him towards me, Shepard. You get ready."

Shepard sighed and clicked, tucking herself further out of sight and tightening her barrier, kneeling to avoid her shadow showing up. Her omnitool displayed the progress of the file transfer, even as Tali set off a series of tech mines she'd planted, spraying smoke and ECM chaff into the air.

Ahern shook his head as if disgusted and knelt, unshipping his sniper rifle and swinging around. He was tucked into the same good cover Liara had fallen back to, with no real way to get close except a direct charge. Shepard instead simply watched her omni as the transmission proceeded, even as Tali began erecting her own defenses. When it finished, she clicked her comm.

"Go for it, Tali. Charging in five." She readied her smoke grenades as well as her last omni-goop grenade, and loaded up a sensor-jammer data spike into her omnitool.

Tali moved, rolling free of cover and bringing up her oversized omnishield. Ahern tried to snipe at her, but the shield blocked his shots. Tali anchored herself against a low concrete wall and began hammering Ahern's position with submachine gun fire. He responded with careful counter fire, his first shot blasting through the low cover to nearly blow a hole in Tali's foot, his second sparking off her weapon, sending it spinning out of her hands.

Tali tapped her omni and her the last of her drones popped up out of cover, barely six feet from Ahern. It had been instructed to stay almost on the ground and to home in on any sensor hits. Now it erupted in sheets of plasma, catching the man squarely, even as Tali leapt over the cover and began opening fire with her shotgun.

Ahern rolled back, but Tali closed on him relentlessly. She'd hooked up over two dozen hack-scripts to one single command and triggered them all, hacking Ahern's armor, weapon, and onboard computer controlling the omni-armor of the Devastator. The heavy form of the Sabre rifle detonated, sending him stumbling back.

Shepard grinned as she could hear him cursing and watched him fall back, his Sabre ruined and having to use his pistol.

With him so heavily distracted, she knew it was time. Shepard charged towards the shuttle, coming out of it to drop smoke and trigger her sensor jammer before rolling into the shuttle itself and skidding to a halt. An officer stood within, frowning.

"You don't have the padd."

Shepard triggered her omni. "We have all the data that was on the padd."

The officer laughed. "Fifteen seconds until you have 'escaped' then.

Ahern had noticed the smoke near the shuttle, but the combination of Tali's hacks, her reckless charge – and the drone – made disengaging and pursuit impossible. He managed to dance aside and get into cover, and his pistol snapped out several shots, blowing the drone out of the air. His second shot was some sort of concussion pulse, which landed behind Tali, making her stumble out of her shallow cover.

His armor smoking, Ahern charged Tali, limping as he ducked under a stream of electroplasma fire. He triggered something on his omnitool and a temporary omni-field sprang up right in front of Tali, spraying her Reegar's blast back over her, making her drop her shotgun.

He closed on her with a flying leap, coming down to one side. She reached for her submachine gun, but his leg swung out in a sweep, taking Tali's legs from under her, sending her sprawling and her weapon flying.

Ahern threw himself into a backwards roll, avoiding her counter of flaring plasma from her omnitool at him, and with quick motion, he kicked her submachine gun out of reach. Tali managed to get to her feet, and snatch up her shotgun, but even as she did so, Ahern tapped his omni, firing off a weapon overload command. Tali's weapon spit a blob of hot plasma and shut off.

He was on her before she could even react, flipping her completely over his head to slam flat on the ground. A second later his omnitool snicked out, slicing her reik in half to 'kill' her.

He immediately swung towards the shuttle, hand dipping to his belt, but it was empty of grenades. His arm missiles were also depleted, and so he triggered an omni-grenade barrage, trying to aim for the shuttle's 'engines'.

Shepard reacted with a combined barrier and a weak push field, scattering the bomblets. Ahern leapt over two barricades and was reaching for something on his leg when the officer shouted out.

"Time! LTC Zorah and LTC T'Soni are dead. The padd is unrecoverable, but Major Shepard has the data on the pad present on her omni and wins the mission."

Ahern limped forward for several more feet before coming to a stop, angrily slapping his helmet control. "What the shitting hell are you talking about, captain? I had that padd booby-trapped – if they so much as touched it, the thing would have gone up in an explosion. They did NOT recover it."

Shepard took off her own helmet and smiled, even as medics rushed onto the field. "No, sir. We didn't recover the padd, but we did get the data. Tali hacked it remotely using a quarian info-war method. The whole goal was to keep you distracted long enough for her to hack it, then transmit it to me. I would charge back and 'win' while the other two held you off."

Ahern scowled. "I said the mission was to recover the padd, not just the data!"

The officer, a young looking Marine captain, coughed. "Actually, sir, you said 'recover the data and get back to the shuttle'. If the goal had been the recovery of data from a source in the real world, Major Shepard's tactics would have worked." He smiled. "I'll go inform the observers that you will have a report for them once you finish debriefing the Major and her team, sir."

Ahern snorted. "Go do that. Goddamned space laywers."

Liara and Tali walked – or in the case of Liara, limped – over, their armor battered and dusty. Ahern glanced at the three of them, then shook his head and smirked. "About time you goddamned idiots stepped up. That was good fucking thinking – just like I taught you. And you finally figured out when the time for sacrificing your men for the mission was appropriate." He paused, then faced Shepard directly.

"Shepard, you're still a bit too aggressive, but you're finally getting the hang of mixing corralling fire with pressure tactics, and that mix of shockwave and debris to set up T'Soni's little biotic fuckery was actually brilliant. Got very close to disarming me, actually. Good use of the sniper rifle, and the fake biotic charge was really inventive. You took a bit too much fire from my Sabre – the concept of goddamned cover is still something you need work on, apparently – but the evasion used, especially in getting away from me and back to the shuttle, that was good. However, we both know you'd never actually sacrifice T'Soni or Zorah like that in a real fight. Try to focus on strategies in the future that you will actually pull off."

He glanced at Liara."T'Soni, that parkour bullshit pisses me off, but it is very effective. The floating shield thing you used to cover the recon drone was brilliant. Using your stasis biotics to fuck with my armor was something I wasn't ready for, especially when you followed it up with warp. Those combination attacks are very nasty, I think that last biotic explosion rattled my brains a bit. Still, you let me fuck up your arm and bracket you with anti-biotic grenades, which let me overpower and kill you. You made a good effort at close quarters combat, but remember you will almost always be hurt when the fight gets to that range, and a wounded arm will nullify most of what you learned. You are better...but you still need improvement."

He finally looked at Tali. "Zorah, you fling grenades and drones the way a sailor spends money in a whorehouse, but that's not a bad thing. The fact you hacked my padd is impressive, since that's the same damned encryption I use for comms with SA Command. Doing so in less than a minute is both incredible and fucking scary. Don't do that again. The suppressive fire was a bit weak, but I couldn't break your defensive setup even with my Sabre, so you do have that down. The multi-hack was good but most professionals will have a quick purge routine setup like I do. I get now why you did that stupid charge, to distract me from Shepard, but you could have come up with some other way to pin me down rather than sacrificing yourself. Remember, if the only answer to a problem ends up with you dead, you are fucking missing the correct answer."

Ahern glanced over his own armor, which was pretty beaten up. Ahern had taken heavy shots pretty much everywhere, was limping badly, and his back was charred. Shepard had taken some shots, Liara had a fractured arm and some grazes on her legs and forearm, and Tali had singes and bruises everywhere. The medics were already approaching. Ahern nodded thoughtfully to himself and gave them a thin smile.

"Not bad. Not _good_, mind you, but not bad. You did better than both Delacor and Branson, so that's a plus, although Anderson and Dragunov both actually beat me down and got the actual padd. Still, I won't be a little bitch about the details. You pass."

The three of them panted and nodded. Shepard looked utterly spent, while Liara was a far paler shade of blue than Tali had ever seen. Tali herself felt like someone had stomped on her for an hour, but her face was stuck in a huge grin.

They'd done it.

Ahern sighed, glancing to where the captain was talking to the small group of officers that had watched them fight, then frowned at the gouge put his forearm armor by Liara's shotgun fire before shaking his head. "Huh. I'm a better teacher than I thought."

He smirked and glanced over them. "Why are you ladies all heaving like you ran a marathon?"

Tali spat. "...you broke my .. everything...when you flipped me." She limped over to a nearby barricade and slumped against it tiredly, her armor dusty and battered. Dr. Sedanya knelt next to her, checking her suit with her omnitool and clucking at the new dents in Tali's cybernetic leg.

Liara had already simply sat down where she stood, wiping sweat from her tired features. The medic was removing pieces of her armor to examine her right forearm. "I do not think I have the strength for any more biotics. I have never seen anyone _dodge_ a singularity before."

He snorted. "The trick is recognizing what you're forming before your throw it. That, and mag-locks on the boots help keep me from floating away helplessly. Keep in mind your little black hole also throws off any rounds incoming towards me, which is why none of those shots you and Shepard were flinging at me got anywhere close."

Liara stared at him for a second before face palming. "Goddess, how stupid of me. No wonder I could not hit you."

Shepard had managed to stay standing – she was not giving the bastard the pleasure of showing how tired she was. "Now what, Admiral? Is this the end of the training, or is there more?"

He snorted. "That depends. Do your really want some more? It's not like you three actually took me down. We can run it again and see if that bullshit with the biotic explosions will work when I'm sniping you with disruptor rounds."

Shepard made a sound halfway between snorting and choking, and glared. "You said to beat you, and we did. Well, sort of. Anyway, what I'm asking is if there is more to go over, or if we get to rest a bit before shipping out. We only have a week left." She frowned as a medic approached her, waving the younger woman away.

Ahern nodded, folding his arms. "There is one other thing I could use your help with, Shepard. I believe when you first arrived I mentioned a wager. It's something I've been working on for the past couple of years, part training project, part hobby, and partly as a way to further humiliate you idiots who come for training."

He tapped his omnitool. "One of the main things Pinnacle prides itself on is building combat scenarios. Both the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council have used my scenarios, and even the Spectres use one or two. I've built hundreds of them for training various officers in various tasks, some simple, some complex. I've redone battles of the First Contact War, simulations of the turian Unification Wars, updated human battles like Hastings and Cannae into modern terms and technology."

He paused. "I've even recreated the assault of my own Legacy Team on Dalthos Fortress. And I have a project I'd like you to take a stab at helping me improve."

She nodded. "Let me guess. You want me to see if my team can did you what you did at Dalthos, against the turians."

Ahern looked at her for a long moment, glancing at Tali and Liara, before erupting into loud, mocking laughter. It must have gone on for a good twenty seconds, every time he seemed about ready to calm down he'd look at her and crack up again.

Liara frowned at him, a bit hurt at his clear mockery, while Tali got to her feet after being being checked over by the medic, folding her arms and glaring. Shepard merely sighed and sunk her weight back onto her right leg, waiting.

Ahern coughed, slightly red in the face, and chuckled. "Ah, goddamn, I haven't heard anything that funny and stupid in fucking years. Shepard, you wouldn't last sixteen seconds at Dalthos. You just had five weeks of me telling you that your head is too fucking big and I see it hasn't shrunk much."

He shook his head. "No, not that. Why don't you three go hit medical and relax a bit. I'll meet you in my office Monday and we can discuss what I have in mind in more detail." He turned away, not even bothering to get out of earshot before he erupted into fresh laughter, limping as his medics trailed him, trying to get him to stop to fix the wounds he had.

Shepard glared after him. "Asshole."

Tali nodded. "Yeah." She paused. "Um... what happened at Dalthos Fortress, anyway? It couldn't be much worse than us going up against Saren and Benezia..."

Shepard frowned. "Five human soldiers with no biotics, omnitools and only basic weapons snuck past a Turian fleet, hijacked a cruiser, crashed into a turian fortress, fought past two hundred defenders, stole VI codes to turian defensive systems, used them to blow up a dreadnaught, and then survived a kinetic bombardment and escaped."

Tali nodded a second time, slowly coming to a stop and then shaking her head. "...maybe he has a point?"

Shepard gave Tali a look. "We could handle it...I mean... if we had a few more than just the three of us..."

Ahern's distant laughter mocked her.


	13. Chapter 13 : Protheans and Preparations

_**A/N:** This was a difficult fluff chapter to write. It's also a bit lengthy, but I'm trying to close out the Arc and move on.  
_

_Also, I have at last identified the Shepard-as-Butcher song : Psychotico Apolyptic, from the M&amp;B Warband OST. No, the Butcher-state doesn't show up in this chapter :D_

_As always, if you have questions about some of what is referenced here, leave a review or PM and I will answer as fast as I can. :)_

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__'People talk about opening up as if it was easy. How can you explain what you don't understand yourself, when every word out of your mouth sounds stupid?'  
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__ – Major-Commander Sara Shepard, 'Lay it on me'__

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Admiral Ahern sat in his office late Saturday night, the only light in the room coming from the station's status repeater on the wall and from the windows. A bottle of brandy was on his desk, a glass of it in his hands, and a padd lay tossed onto the desk's surface.

He sipped his brandy slowly, staring out the windows over his base, lost in thought. He knew the bars would be packed, hard-partying Marines from the Second Arcturus fresh from graduating from A-Rate school mingling with Shepard's hard-worked crews who were also celebrating. It was a good night, for most. One of success and celebration, victory and preparing to move on to bigger and better things.

He gently put the glass down, feeling his years and the exertions of the past month. For him, this was usually a time for him to relax. He was too wrought up to relax, though. Nor could he work on the simulation that would kick off on Monday. His mind was having trouble focusing on it.

He hated introspection, and when he got like this, he often felt it was just his childish side, suppressed in the trials of his youth, coming out to play. Second guessing yourself was stupid, and it was always best to just over-prepare for the worst, then go with the flow. The turians had the right idea: make a decision, stick with it, and don't second guess it.

That he was doubting his course of action made him concerned that his judgment and common sense had fallen prey to hubris about his own infallibility. It would be ironic if after preaching his mantra to so many other officers that he had trained, he'd fall afoul of it himself.

Ahern had lived a life that would have killed most people, and had always done so based on his own rules. The rules had served in battle as well as life, and he found that every time he got in trouble, it had been due to breaking one. Once, Rachel Florez had mockingly called them "The Tenets of Not Dying Like an Idiot", and the name for the rules had stuck.

One of those rules was 'Never assume, always verify'. And he'd made some pretty hefty assumptions in the case of Shepard, assumptions that now led him to wonder about the longer-term wisdom of both what he had put her through, and what she would end up becoming.

When the Fleet Master had given him this stupid assignment – train Shepard and her two alien officers, get her crews and ships in shape, and explain to her the truth about the SA – he'd been more than skeptical, and drawn up his arguments against doing such a thing based on what he felt was common sense, along with a good dollop of cursing, because, hey, fuck Dragunov.

The Fleet had just taken a serious beating at both Terra Nova and the Citadel, and detailing an entire BG to do God knows what under the command of someone who had been ground-side until a year ago was flat out retarded. Worse, half the ships given to Shepard were smashed to hell, the other half relics from the fucking 2150's.

The Kazan was a good ship...full of untested prototypes that could go belly up at a moment's notice, and turning the rest of the fleet into test platforms was just asking for trouble when they got into a real fight. Getting the ships straightened out in a normal, four month stand-down would be no problem. Five weeks, however, _was_ a problem, especially when he knew full well BuShips would waste a whole week on bitching.

The crews were more of the same – fragments from other ships that had been lost at Terra Nova or the Citadel. Untested in working together, with half the captains having been XO's before this assignment, and the only truly experienced captain the entire fleet being von Khar.

It didn't help that his own people wouldn't actually have all five weeks to train the crew, given they had to work on the refits as well.

Shepard's command staff was basically worthless. The mouthy little pilot was the best he'd ever seen – and Ahern did not impress easily – but too cocky. Colms was his own goddamned bundle of problems, the guy was _not_ stable and clearly going to build a giant bomb someday that would probably get them all killed.

The rest were just _there _– not enough experience to stand out. If they'd been command staff on a regular cruiser under the command of a superior ship with mentors to learn from, he would say they were fine. But they were going to be the senior staff of an entire battle group, and none of them had the experience for that.

On top of that, the idea of training LTC T'Soni and LTC Zorah into proper officers of any kind in five weeks was ridiculous. The very concept of getting two alien teens into the kind of condition and mindset that was expected of a_ Lieutenant Commander_ in that time frame, which usually took years, was even more stupid. Ensigns and Second Lieutenants went through a focused two-year program, then at least four years of service to get promoted, and then usually four more on top of that to even hit LTC, much less section command on a heavy cruiser.

He couldn't work miracles, he'd argued.

Yet, as the past few weeks had proven, he could get close.

The crews were coming together, although he wouldn't like to see them up against a superior force. The various officers had, once they'd gotten the shit kicked out of them, actually stepped up and demonstrated that BuPers wasn't actually staffed by incompetents, and that they could perform. That had surprised him, but he was actually slightly encouraged by this. If this is what could be done with a random group of fragmented crews, perhaps humanity was not irrevocably, totally fucked after all.

T'Soni had not learned everything she needed to know, but she would at fucking least stop just trailing after her girlfriend and throw warp fire at everything. The quarian girl had actually impressed him, some part of her grit to not give up reminding him even more of his own lost daughter. He had no doubts she'd be able to survive. The fact that both of them took their jobs and duty to the SA very seriously had surprised him as well, but he had to grudgingly admit that they probably wouldn't fuck anything up too bad.

Shepard had surprised him the most. And after decades of fighting with all kinds of Marines and training half the damned command officers in the SA, he should have not been able to _be _surprised by someone like her.

Never assume, always verify. Assumption was the momma of all fuckups.

He'd assumed that Shepard was simply not something that was salvageable, right from the start. The woman was damaged goods, no one in their right mind could doubt that. The bullshit pulled on her at Torfan had clearly fucked her head up. She'd been given a reprieve by being made a Spectre, but too many of her fights ended up with her in a hospital bed, which to him smelled of a death wish.

He was really tired of emo-ass crying asshats who decided pulling AD 960 was the way to end their problems. Death never solved shit, and dying because you couldn't man the fuck up – no matter how bad shit was – just pissed him off more. He'd assumed that had been her problem.

He'd ignored, for the most part, that she had over the course of a year gone from a murdering crazed little bitch to something that the SA could finally take some pride in. He simply assumed that someone had finally stepped up. Maybe Rachel and Anderson were mentoring her again. He didn't know all the details when he began, only the flaws that he saw in her combat style.

That and the fact she was fucking her precious little asari doctor. Ugh. That still pissed him off. He'd argued with the Fleet Master, and been told point blank that the Commissariat had already signed off on it. So had the President. Some shit about Beacons and noble rights or some other garbage. He'd thrown up his hands and agreed under protest, and assumed that she had someone keeping her out of trouble and making sure she wasn't tossed to the wolves.

He took another sip of his drink, wincing at how wrong he'd been about _that_ shit.

Given that he was forced to train her, he wasn't going to half-ass it, and begun reviewing everything he could find on her. Lots of video, lots of tactical write-ups, lots of rumor and word-of-mouth bullshit. Lots of verbal fellation about how 'lethal' she was. All he saw was yet another blood-drenched biotic yo-yo, flung around with the finesse of a vorcha demolitions team.

He'd assumed, based on the paucity of clear combat data and the evidence of what he saw in their first training session, that she was just a disaster. Little more than a brutal wrecking ball that stormed in and killed before an enemy could prepare.

She was ruthless and willing to pay any cost to get the job done, but had no grace, no understanding of when the terror was just too fucking much. Of course she scared the shit out of pirates and slavers. Big fucking deal. Didn't impress him, and he assumed she did it out of more fucktarded desire for showing how badass she was.

He knew how the Legion was trained. Goddamned attrition tactics, with the tactical awareness of a fucking volus. And that training echoed in her fighting style – the dependance on full-auto weapons, the lack of proper use of cover.

Granted, it wasn't all she had to work with. She had taken bits of what she could piece together from tactical manuals, endless hours of practice, and volunteering to work with asari commandos, and had somehow put that together into a fighting style. It was crude, rough, and full of holes, but it was a fighting style. And at least she was protective of those close to her, and her crews. That showed she wasn't a complete sociopath.

Her style, such as it was, demonstrated the pinnacle of what the SA wanted out of their Vanguards, brutality mixed with mobility. Ahern didn't bother picking it apart to salvage it, he just told her it sucked ass and began training her properly. He thought the Vanguard program was stupid from the start, and given that no Vanguard had ever fucking survived long enough to be a command officer before Shepard, he rather thought that proved his point.

Ahern had trained more than one so-called badass from the N7s before. He'd dealt with cocky assholes, people who clearly had more balls than brains, and those – like Branson – who were quite plainly fake heroes. So he'd been expecting a great deal of resistance of his training, of her arguing her way of doing things as better, of her pulling out some shit about him not being biotic and not getting it.

He had assumed she was arrogant, and yet she wasn't. Sloppy, yes. Untrained, yes. But not arrogant. It hadn't hit him until nearly the fourth week into the training, when he had first realized she hand not complained even once.

He'd been drilling her hard on cover mechanics, for hours, and she was clearly exhausted both physically and mentally. At one point she'd almost been unable to stand. But she kept on getting up and going at it. When he'd given her a break, she'd made a joke about how just dodging around with the kanquess was easier.

He'd asked her if that was the case, why hadn't she pushed back on his training, assuming her answer would be something smartass. Instead, she'd given him the most god-awful fucking look he'd ever seen in his entire life.

_Gratitude_.

That look was pure gratitude. She had smiled a moment later, and said she was just happy to be trained by someone who gave a shit if she lived or died.

He'd been surprised at how hard she worked at it, pushing herself to her limits to get it right without even bitching about it. And now he understood. She didn't complain because she was actually _happy. _

Someone was training her properly for the first time in her life, and even if she felt like her own battle style had been stupid and she'd wasted her time, she was overjoyed someone believed in her enough to try and teach her how to _fix_ it. She was happy Ahern, the greatest instructor in the entire SA, cared enough about her life to show her a better way. She was happy she had a clear method to improve herself.

Ahern felt physically ill when that realization hit him.

He'd had to cut their session short, so he could scream invectives in his office at the top of his lungs. He had eventually calmed enough to rethink his entire position on her.

He wondered what it cost her, all these years of doing shit on her own.

How many times she'd had no one to explain why her assaults had gone wrong, or how to deal with the trauma of battle. How much agony she'd put herself through trying to figure out rules no one bothered to explain, to make herself the best without a single solitary fucking clue on how to proceed. How many times she'd killed her own emotions, just to process shit she had no way of figuring out, while she dodged both fame and curses.

He had assumed, before he understood her, that she'd just been stupid and full of herself, thinking she didn't need to follow the rules because she had biotics. The truth – that she'd been forced to develop her own fighting style and make it work – explained all the things wrong with it.

Her fixation on overwhelming firepower had clearly come from the inadequate weapons of the Legion and probably the RRU. Her need for the heaviest fucking armor probably stemmed from the same lace, that and watching her marines die on Torfan due to the Onyx not having good spall protection when shields were breached. Her love of explosives was an artifact of Rachel having trained her, as was most of her martial arts. Her lack of any tactical subtlety was due to no one teaching it to her.

Her aggression and hate made her seemingly act stupid, but they also let her power through things she might not have with a cooler head. She didn't bother with cover and maneuver tactics because pressure tactics with the kanquess let her kill the enemy faster – preferably before they could kill any more of her friends. And unlike so many command officers, who let the deaths just become numbers, she took every one of them personally.

Worst of all, he'd torn her style apart thinking she was arrogant, belittling everything she'd achieved, and now that seemed less like breaking through arrogance, and more like kicking a puppy. He'd basically upended everything she'd done for herself, throwing it away as useless.

Ahern wasn't much for touchy-feely bullshit, but even he could understand that probably hurt her.

And she was still grateful. Goddamn it.

He'd gone back and reviewed again, with a more critical eye, much of the combat footage they had on her. He himself had mocked her actions on Eden Prime, charging recklessly into a pile of geth, then biotically punching a Prime after using pulls and shock waves to crush the rest of the geth with shipping crates. Yet no matter how he ran that situation, given the starting condition – rickety tram under heavy missile fire, and then close range with a Prime – he couldn't find a better way to end the fight than what she had done.

Likewise, her other battles had proven she had the gift for command, even if not the details. She was a natural at space combat. She was a master at small units. She wasn't some REMF sending her men off to get killed out of laziness, she risked her life right next to them on the line every time. Her sloppiness with the helmet, her tendency to go for flash over substance – these were just marks of neglect, not of arrogance.

With a bare handful of marines and a few aliens, she'd taken down Cerberus, assaulted dug in geth, escaped certain death twice, outfought Saren, managed to save the council and go toe-to-toe with one of the strongest asari war priestesses in history without dying.

Shepard had needed to be reshaped, but he'd done so before understanding her, or why she acted the way she did. She'd taken all of his training well. She'd learned his tactics well. When she put her mind to it, and someone bothered to actually fix her issues, she'd proven she wasn't just a bloodthirsty little bitch.

She was a _soldier_. A Marine.

He'd assumed that after his first meeting – after seeing the verbal jab he'd thrown destabilize her badly enough to take a swing at him – that he just had to beat her ass into shape and make her respect him to make everything work. He'd assumed that her issues and failing were due to her arrogance, not her lack of understanding, or help.

And it made no sense that she didn't have that help. She was the protege of David Anderson and Rachel Florez, the personal golden-girl of General von Grath and Preston Kyle. There were enough people to have seen what he saw, to have stepped in and helped, to have done something besides let her go on this way.

Rather than assume again, he decided to to ask, and by ask he meant getting them on the horn to scream bloody fucking murder at them. Oh, Anderson and von Grath and that stupid fuck Delacor had all given their reasons, but they all added up to the same goddamned thing. "We assumed".

With Delacor, he was a goddamned pussy, plain and simple. The man had a string of bad luck as long as vorcha were stupid, and it had made him a weak-ass crying man-child. He was sorry Kyle had died, but his final act was trolling on a level just as good as Michael Saracino's had been back in the day, and personally Ahern though it was hilarious Kyle had nearly killed Delacor with his final fuck you. Delacor deserved it – instead of trying to mentor or help Shepard, he'd just let her run wild, then complained to command when she did so. He assumed that she was not fixable – which Ahern could understand – but also that someone at SA HQ was 'out to get him' by assigning her to him.

Fucking paranoid jackass.

As for that fool von Grath, his answers had been equally fucking useless. "Shepard always struck me as a carefully balanced disaster. I tried to mitigate the damage her actions did to her career, rather than risk destabilizing my finest weapon that I had no chance of really understanding. I assumed that others closer to her might be better at that task." He was basically just a cold-blooded aristocratic REMF, and Ahern's fury had bounced off the man's arrogant disdain, finally ending with von Grath rather breezily commenting that Ahern should focus more on fixing Shepard than complaining about the failures of others.

Those two were fucking idiots. And himself a fucktard, right there with them.

His conversation with Anderson had been the worst, of course.

Anderson had basically straight out said that there was nothing to 'fix', that while Shepard had a lot of problems, she was a big girl and the whole Benezia Incident had proven she could handle herself, just fine. He claimed he hadn't known about some of the shit she'd been put through, or her entire early history, until he'd already reached Captain – and that his first act was to get her under his own command so that he could help her.

And he resented the idea that there was anything wrong with his assumption that Shepard just needed some emotional support, and not a complete overhaul. "With all due respect, Admiral Ahern, you have no idea how emotionally damaged she is. When it comes to addressing that or your perceived flaws in her combat skills, I'll work on the former every time."

Idiot.

Ahern had no problems believing Anderson didn't get Shepard. So she had a rough childhood and upbringing. If the SA had not done every possible fucking thing they could to break her once she was under their control, she could have gotten over that shit years ago.

And yet...the SA had done everything they could to mind fuck her, while people like Anderson stood by and watched.

It bothered him, a lot. For all these years, David had always taken an interest in Shepard, touted her as his best soldier. He had frankly expected better of David, and he'd been more than a little sharp with the man. Far too many of Anderson's answers had just pissed him off more, especially given that Anderson was basically turning a blind eye to her problems, fixing her 'emotional damage' while leaving her skills in the state they were in.

He had already heard, via his oldest friend, Yonis Chu, that Rachel Florez was one of the people in charge of Cerberus. And the more he flipped through Shepard's records and postings, he had an ugly suspicion she wasn't the only one in bed with those sick fucks. There were just too many coincidences, too many old pieces of the ugly shit that had created nightmares like Cerberus and the Legion project, floating around Shepard.

No one bothered to really _look_ at her. No one saw anything wrong except she was 'bloodthirsty' or 'hard to control'. No one asked the simple fucking question of how she was able to pull the shit she did off. No one bothered to connect the dots between her past and her inability to fit in.

No one was that blind and stupid. The SA, Cerberus, or _someone_ had been carefully crafting a weapon.

That was what really infuriated him, in the aftermath of figuring her out. Someone had done this to her _on purpose. _They wanted a biotic killing machine, emotionless, broken, and desperate for someone to tell her she did a good job. Every step of her career, from the all-too-repeated missions with no down time, to the set up at Torfan, to sticking her with Delacor, pointed to it.

Even her recruitment smelled fishy. What in fuck would Anderson be doing in the worst part of the NyARC, anyway? Her record had so many black-marks and redactions in it that it might as well have just been a black sheet of paper.

Anderson said he hadn't reacted because there was nothing to fix. He took another drink. There were times he wondered if literally every single being in the galaxy other than him was a goddamned idiot.

If the SA had been trying to craft a SPECTRE, they'd succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The kind of shit they were throwing at her now – nobility, commands, letting her literally break all the rules and marry her asari girlfriend – they were just there to win her loyalty, make her love the SA again.

It was simple emotional manipulation, the kind of shit a normal person would see through instantly – but Shepard was crippled in that regard. Funny, for all Anderson's words about fixing her emotional issues, there wasn't much evidence of it.

There were times he hated the SA. He knew, better than most, why it acted the way it did. It was more than the shit the other races did, more than the dark secrets in the Mars Archive, even more than the paranoia and scars left by the Days of Iron. Humans overreacted when they were scared, and humanity had been running scared for over a century now.

He served the SA loyally because there was no alternative. It was all built to keep going, to prevent anything from derailing whatever fucked up plans the noble big shots had, and more importantly, to keep humanity from going out like the krogan – or the rachni. Balanced against that, even bullshit like what they were doing to Shepard could be rationalized. And it wasn't his job to criticize. Shit had happened, the only response was to adjust your own plans.

The bigger issue was how exactly to adjust said plans. The questions he had to ask himself now were two. First, should he even get involved in what was going on with Shepard, and second, if he did, what to do to fix the situation.

The first question was easy enough. He was a goddamned Marine. She was a goddamned Marine. Marines did not leave other marines behind.

That left him with how exactly to help her. Telling her straight out wouldn't do anything. If he was right and she'd been played her entire life, she wouldn't believe him. And more than that, just telling her wouldn't do anything but destroy her completely. She needed to realize that Bad Shit Happens, and you can't really stop it with nice words.

Even if she did believe him and didn't go mad, then what? One didn't invest that kind of effort into one soldier without a very solid reason, and he didn't know that reason. Derailing her at this point might do more harm than good, and he was done with assuming shit.

That didn't mean he had to leave shit as it was. He'd done what he could to turn her from a mindless weapon into a fine soldier. She could, with time, adapt what he'd taught her and incorporate it into her own combat style, maybe creating a unison of the two. He was pretty sure that would both fulfill whatever the SA wanted for her without leaving her helpless against the first goddamned credible assassin they sent her way.

No, the real thing she needed now was a final bit of guidance. She needed to _see _what she'd become, before this training. He'd torn her down her whole time here, so it was time to do a little rebuilding and to show her why he'd done what he had done. The reasons had changed, but she hardly needed to know that. What she needed was simple guidance on how to make herself better. Someone to not coddle her, but to encourage her and give specific improvements.

And if the SA could play subtle mind games, well, he could fucking do that too. With a grim smile, he poured himself another glass of brandy, and decided to make some changes to his little simulation on Monday.

O-ATTWN-O

Shepard spent Sunday morning in her study on the Kazan, going through reports on ship and crew readiness, feeling a slowly rising sense of satisfaction. For the last week of refit, she'd decided to give her people a break. Working with Pressly, she drew up four-section watch-standing schedules and limited daily drills to four hours a day, with liberty set each night at 1800 hours. She also told the fleet they could expect a good two weeks leave when BG Chiron got back to Arcturus, which helped boost morale even more.

There was still some minor work to be done – testing, shakedowns and the like. The captains had submitted their proposed shakedown schedules, mostly doing them on Monday and Tuesday, which would give them three days to address any last minute problems.

After wasting her morning on administrivia, she ate lunch on the Kazan's mess decks with Liara, who was excited. Apparently she had been contacted by the Systems Alliance's Prothean Research Center on Mars, who were wondering if she and Shepard could assist with translating or understanding certain Prothean materials from the Archive. Liara's new status as an officer and citizen made her 'trustworthy' enough to see such information, because the Alliance was certainly not letting other aliens get a look at it.

Shepard ate her sandwich calmly. "I guess I can take a stab at it. Did they send something for us to look at or..."

Liara smiled and pulled out her padd, bringing up an image of a heavily carved metallic tablet. "They did! They have been working on this piece for almost five years now, and they think – based on the diagrams near the bottom – that it must have something to do with explanations of how mass relays work. I've taken a look at it myself, but my version of the Cipher does not seem to grant me any ability at reading actual Prothean script..."

Shepard glanced at it, then frowned and read more intently. Finally she shook her head. "Well, that's fucking creepy."

Liara looked up. "What is it, Sara?"

Shepard gave a long, slow exhale. "Yeah...I can read this. It isn't good news." She put down her food and looked up at Liara. "This is a warning. The Prothean who wrote it is describing what research they had managed to accomplish on creating their own mass relays. It says there is a kind of math needed to figure it out..."

She squinted at the image. "...and that it ends up driving people batshit crazy. This thing is talking about how they built the Conduit, Liara – warning us that trying to build mass relays is very dangerous."

Liara frowned. "I am delighted you can read this, but...why would the Protheans be warning us about building relays?"

Shepard gave a pained smile, glancing back at the text. "The Reapers shut down all the relays they built once they took over the Citadel. The Conduit was supposed to be their test bed platform to get around that, except most of the people working on it went fucking crazy, and every time they tested the power-sources out the Reapers showed up almost instantly. Their game plan to build their own relays to get around the shut down just ended up getting a lot of hidden research worlds taken out."

She grimaced. "The guy who wrote this says the Reapers showed up less than forty-eight hours after their first tests of a scaled down mass relay. He thinks it is what set them off to invade, and is telling us not to do the same thing. The only reason they never found the Conduit is the Protheans finally managed to figure out how to tweak the power supply to use something else, but that took the power of an entire planet's worth of generators and wasn't really useful for large-scale deployment."

She tapped the padd. "The stuff at the bottom is harder to make out. It's a bunch of math related stuff, and I'm...not sure what the fuck the guy is saying." She handed it back to Liara, who took it back with a smile.

"Even so, this is wonderful. There must be all sorts of information the Protheans left behind on the Mars Archive that hasn't been looked at! We could work on this together and help the Systems Alliance at the same time as we advance knowledge of the Protheans."

Shepard leaned back in her chair, smiling at the happiness Liara was radiating. "Well...I do need a hobby besides making guns and killing shit, I guess. And it is something we can do together. You'll have to educate me on some of this stuff, I can read it but I don't know what some of it will mean."

Liara smiled brilliantly, and took Shepard's hand. "I would like that. It would give us another connection."

She was about to reply when Ensign Traynor came out of the lift, looking around. She pulled her hand away from Liara's to motion the younger woman over. "Traynor?"

The comms officer blushed as she smiled hesitantly at them both. Shepard was not one hundred percent sure why Traynor tended to blush around her and Liara, but she had her suspicions. At least she was more subtle about it than some of the men, so she shrugged it off.

Traynor finally found her voice. "Ma'am, I'm sorry to interrupt, but you have a call incoming from General von Grath. He said it has something to do with you and Lieutenant Commander T'Soni?"

Shepard ignored the questioning note in her voice and sighed. "I'm about done eating, anyway. You up to talking to the General, Liara?"

Liara had already finished her small meal, and stood, gathering up her padd. "Yes, of course."

Shepard nodded. "Traynor, tell him we'll be on the horn as soon as finish my sandwich." She watched the comm officer walk away before shaking her head, taking another bite of her food.

Liara glanced at her. "You are...amused?"

Shepard jerked her head in the direction of the now closed elevator. "I think our ensign has a crush on me, or you." She coughed. "Or both. And if _I_ can see it, daaaamn."

Liara blinked, glanced at the elevator, then blinked again. "Oh. Oh! I-I mean, I am not sure that sort...is that even proper? Are threesomes common among your people? I did not know you were open to such things."

Shepard managed not to choke.

O-OSaBC-O

A few minutes later, they were in Sara's ready room, facing the comm plinth in the corner, now filled with a small holographic projection of General von Grath.

"Ah, Shepard. I am gratified to see you are in one piece after a month in the hands of that crazed lunatic Ahern. And milady Liara, you look as radiant as usual."

Shepard put her hands on her hips "You stole my doctor, sir."

Jason von Grath stroked his mustache with unmistakable smug glee. "I am sure I do not understand what you mean. I merely offered Karin a chance to have a calmer assignment and catch her breath after _someone _dragged her into the most hellish fights since the First Contact War."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Sir, I thought you learned your lesson about this kind of thing with Colonel Amanda Slate. Besides, you know my track record with doctors. She's the first one who ever gave a shit about me." She thought on that a moment, and von Grath arched an eyebrow.

"Well, I assure you I am taking very good care of her. And let's not mention milady Slate, or should I bring up you and the salarian again?"

Shepard snarled. "You are never going to let that go, are you?"

The general only smiled wider. "As satisfying as it may be to spin you up, Shepard, this call is actually in regards to your upcoming tasks at Arcturus. We have managed to ensure there will be neither courts-martial nor any disapproval – at least, officially – from the Systems Alliance command regarding your upcoming nuptials."

Shepard glanced at Liara, before nodding. "That's a neat trick, how did you pull that off?"

He shrugged. "I didn't, really. That is why I requisitioned Major Chakwas, among other reasons. Her reports on your ongoing difficulties after the Beacon and Cipher finished giving your brains a good stir was instrumental in convincing the High Lords that this liaison was the only way to keep you alive."

Shepard grimaced. Chakwas had given her the score on that, before she had left, and Dr. Sedanya had confirmed it.

Whatever had been done to Shepard by the Beacon and the Cipher had inflicted severe psycho-neurological trauma on Shepard, enough to kill most people in short order. If Liara had not stepped in and gotten involved by melding and somehow preventing the Cipher and Beacon from doing more damage, Shepard would have died or gone crazy around the time they hit Noveria.

By the estimates of Chakwas, later confirmed by Alliance Medical, without mental intervention like that performed by Liara in the course of their bonding, Shepard would again begin to suffer mental breakdown within four months, and probable catatonia within a year.

She would require an asari to meld deeply with her for the rest of her life, and any asari doing so would be privy to all the secrets in Shepard's head, both Alliance and Spectre – not to mention the truth about the Reapers.

Liara spoke, her voice slightly troubled. "Is the resistance to our joining due to me being an alien, General?"

Von Grath shook his head. "No, at least, not entirely. There are bigots anywhere one goes, of course, but the nobility of Earth like pretending they are above such things. If you were some commoner, the idea would be absurd, but you are the first of the Thirty to bind yourself not only to a human noble, but to take citizenship with the SA. The High Lords of Sol already see you as some kind of playing piece to use with our own asari citizens."

He folded his arms. "Moreover, the larger issue of concern is that you are a serving officer under Shepard's command. Fraternization is not well tolerated in the Alliance Military, despite how much of it occurs. Liaisons between officers in differing lines of command are fine, but any relationships between enlisted and officers – or subordinate and superior officers – is a concern."

Von Grath smiled. "Got around that, too. The Articles of Nobility finally came in handy."

Shepard gave him a puzzled look, and von Grath winced. "Shepard, as a noble, you have a duty to carry on your line through children."

Shepard scowled. "General, you already know I am sterile. I can't have …" She glanced at Liara. "...oh."

Von Grath snickered. "I love how your mouth effortlessly outruns your brain, then graciously pauses to let it catch up. Yes, as you have surmised, since you cannot fulfill the requirement, pairing you with an asari is the only solution. It was done a few years back by the Fordant Family, when Baron Fordant was rendered sterile and had no relatives within four degrees of separation – he married an asari girl from some Lesser House."

Shepard nodded. "In other words, there won't be any problems? That would be a first."

Von Grath smiled. "I can assure you that any problems will not come from the SA. The affair will be held upon my family's estates on Arcturus Station, far from prying reporters. Captain Anderson and Matriarch Aethyta are handling the details, I believe. I called to see if there are any additional people you would care to invite. Here is the list of invitees."

A ping from her omnitool popped up, displaying a short list of invitees. Shepard held it out where Liara could also see and scanned it, frowning. "Holy shit. High Commandant de la Muerte is coming?"

Liara goggled. "And Matriarch Uressa T'Shora?"

Von Grath shrugged. "It will still be very low key – your Normandy crew, a few N7s from your RRU and RIU days who aren't complete idiots, and about a half dozen other humans. Maybe a dozen asari. The Commissariat released that idiot Dunn – who I still cannot believe was stupid enough to join Cerberus – and Anderson made contact with that krogan of yours, Urdnot Wrex, who is bringing back Jackson with him, assuming the man has a mind left at all."

Shepard nodded. It would hopefully be good to see Baby Blue again – she doubted Dunn would be anything but an asshole, but that was sort of expected. And Beatrice surely would not show up. She glanced over the list again, then shrugged. "I can only think of a few people."

Von Grath nodded. "Names and locations, and I will contact them."

Shepard frowned. "The first would be the asari commando who trained me, Strike Mistress Seinna. She should be at the Lodge of the Dancing Kanquess on Thessia. I don't have her TTG code, though..."

Von Grath shrugged. "I am sure Alliance Command will, since that was an official program. Next?"

She smiled. "Valerie Kyle."

Von Grath grimaced. "Ah, the Little Butcher. Kyle's daughter is turning into a complete hellion, these days. I am surprised you are on good terms with her, the rest of her Family – "

She sighed. "Yeah, I know. But she made a point of seeking me out not long after Torfan and saying she forgave me, and that she'd heard the truth of what happened. I think she was angry with her father for not doing more to stop it. Anyway, I need to talk to her. To tell her why her father died. And I hope she will be willing to listen to me and stop trying to be like me. Ugh."

Von Grath shrugged. "Anyone else?"

Shepard tapped her chin. "Just one. Warden Kuril of the Blue Suns Military Corporation, on Purgatory."

Von Grath laughed. "That cretin! The one who paid you off for bringing him slavers! Yes, I suppose you two would get along famously."

She shrugged. "He was the first turian I met who didn't have a stick up his ass. That count has grown to two now..." She checked to make sure Garrus was invited, then glanced at Liara. "Anyone?"

Liara had a brief, mad moment of wanting to invite Amania, just to hurt her. Or maybe Doctor Sanaris, but that would be incredibly petty. Instead, she glanced over the list. Matriarch Suliasa would be there, as well as Riala and several lesser house members were already invited. There were a few more asari, a Vasir whose name she did not recognize, and the strange inclusion of Matriarch Uressa T'Shora.

She thought on who else could attend, and the only name she came up with was her old professor of Prothean Studies. She found it somewhat sad that she could think of no one else close enough to her for an invitation to her own hand-fasting.

_Then again, very few maidens get hand-fasted._

She smiled sadly. "Professor Ranya of Clan Skywatch, at the University of Serrice on Thessia, is the only one I can think of."

She flinched a little at the hurt look on Shepard's face, knowing her bondmate could feel the sting of having so few people to care for her. Von Grath diplomatically said nothing, instead humming and then nodding.

"Very good, ladies. I don't suppose you ladies have given thought to what you will wear?"

Shepard and Liara looked at him blankly, then at each other, then back at him, and he shook his head with a sigh. "Yes, well, delicate flowers you two are not. The ceremony is likely to be short, so perhaps you can get away with dress uniforms, although I believe Matriarch Aethyta is procuring clothing for Lady Liara."

Liara winced. "Asari are hand-fasted while very nearly nude, General, and most other guests are nude as well. Our marriage parties tend to descend into what I believe your people describe as 'orgies'. Any clothing my aithntar obtains will be...decorative and of little substance. "

Shepard derived vast amusement and satisfaction from watching the ever debonair von Grath actually look flustered and seeing him struck speechless, before shaking his head yet again. She laughed. "Liara can take conversations where you least expect it. One of our first talks was on turian-asari sexual injuries."

"You are doing this on purpose, Shepard." Von Grath glared, then laughed. "I am fairly certain that the, ah, proceedings will be held along more _human_ lines than that, Lady Liara. Or else this will be even more entertaining than I originally expected."

He paused, then glanced up at Shepard, his tiny avatar folding its arms again. "I'm afraid there is a slightly more serious side to this call, Shepard. Last night, batarian pirates shot down a civilian liner with over eighty humans on board, literally just outside Alliance space. Alliance diplomats informed the Council this morning, and the embargo against the Hegemony has increased in scope."

He grimaced. "Three hours ago, the pirates executed the surviving humans, saying they would continue this behavior until the Citadel ended the embargo and threw humanity off the Council. They then struck a hanar ship and blew it up. Udina says the Council is wary of pushing any harder – right now, the Fleets are still a wreck, while the Batarians are untouched."

His eyes narrowed. "The threat rating has been raised up to Consterno again, and we just stood down from going E with the mess with Benezia. We may be back at that soon. I'm just advising you there is every chance your two weeks of leave may get cut short by a few days if something else blows up."

Shepard shrugged. "Understood, sir. I've never had two weeks off anyway, and it's not like we're planning to go on a cruise. We will be ready if something happens."

He shrugged back. "I hope so. Admiral Ahern says your battle-group is nearly ready...and tore my head off for not training you better. While I could argue that as a battlesuit pilot I am hardly the one best suited to correct any perceived deficiencies in your combat tactics...I am sorry that I was not more open in your defense after Torfan. I did not do it to hurt you."

She swallowed. After Torfan, pretty much everyone had walked away from her – some openly and hurtfully, like Neutron, others just by fading into the background. With the Second RRU dissolved, and Kyle remanded off to Alliance Medical to undergo treatment for PTSD, the only people who could have stood up for her had been von Grath, Anderson, and Florez.

Rachel had been the only one to do so, while Anderson buried himself in work after they'd argued, and von Grath had simply...moved on, dabbling in politics and with his noble family's obligations. It had hurt, at the time, but there was so much pain wrapped around Torfan she had tried as hard as she could let it go. When he'd just shown up in her life again, she'd been too grateful to bring it up.

She bit her lip, not sure what she should say, and instead Liara spoke.

"General, it is good that you can show your concern, but I believe that is a conversation you should pursue in person, perhaps when things are not so chaotic. We are still exhausted from our training, after all."

Von Grath inclined his head. "Of course. I look forward to seeing you at Arcturus, Shepard. Stay safe."

The connection cut, and Shepard just exhaled quietly. "Thanks, Li...I didn't...what the fuck do you say to that?"

Liara's eyes narrowed and she gazed almost hatefully at the comm plinth for a moment before taking Shepard's hands in hers. "Sara. I am sure he meant well with his words."

Shepard nodded, then squeezed Liara's hands. "I just .."

With a careful movement, she pulled Liara close. "I'm just worn the fuck out."

Liara hugged her, the warmth of Shepard's cheek against hers comforting. "I am here."

Shepard managed to find a smile. "I am just so mixed up right now. Too much shit is happening. Too much is changing. Things...that I've never done, that I don't know how to do, but I am supposed to do."

She bit her lip."And the more I try to make things make sense, the less I actually understand anything at all. I...I study these _things_ Ahern gives me. All these plans, and strategies, and tactics. All this information shoved in my head to make me 'better'. But how much of it can I really get?"

Liara nodded. "I have also struggled to absorb the amount of knowledge flung our way, although I believe that is more due to my own lack of a military background. However, I have an advantage over you in that I have been studying and absorbing information for fifty years." She paused. "I could...work with you? Try and help you to learn things quicker, or help you with studying."

Shepard squeezed her hand tighter. "Thanks. I need that. God, I fucking swear Liara, if I didn't have you I'd be so fucking lost..."

Liara tried very hard to keep her emotions calm and supportive, feeling Shepard's own emotional turmoil. "But you do have me, and always will, so do not despair. You are worried, love." She drew back slightly, enough to look at Shepard's wonderful blue eyes, a look of worry etched on her face. "I am _here_."

Shepard only gave a helpless shrug. "I don't know where to fucking start. People...fuck. They want too much! They think I'm some kind of...of...I don't know. Perfect person or some shit. Have people not been fucking watching me barely survive the last year?"

Liara kissed her. "They see what I see. A heroic figure, who risked her life to do what no one else could hope to achieve. A champion, who never faltered at danger, even when no one believed in her."

Shepard snorted."I'm not a hero. People are goddamned idiots. They .. they assume I can do this, just like they assumed I'd fucking crush pirates, or die heroically at Torfan. And of course Commander Shepard never showed any doubts, so certainly Major Shepard should be fine, right?"

Shepard shook her head. "I don't what in fuck I should even be doing. There's no manual for this shit, and no easy answers."

Liara bit her lip, reaching up to gently stroke her lover's cheek. "Sara, I do not have any answers either. I am as lost as you. All my life is a cast-off wreckage, and all I can do is cling and try to find new meanings. But I have felt as you have felt, when the House expected me to actually take up the mantle of the Matria. I was in over my head, surrounded by people who had demands of me...and yet had never supported me."

Shepard nodded, and Liara smiled. "I ended up walking away from it because I was not ready for it. Not the responsibility, or the pressure, or the expectation. Or the hate I would inevitably encounter. That was not the act of a leader – it was the act of a coward."

Shepard tried to protest but Liara cut her off. "No, love. Please...listen. You feel that you are being pressured into a role you are not ready for, with expectation you cannot fulfill. I do not think that is accurate. I think you have proven you can do this – that _we _can do this. And I think as long as you have people standing with you to help, we can be successful."

Shepard sighed. "That...maybe. I have no idea. I'm just tired of being put on showcase and expected to perform and prove myself. I have to prove to Ahern that I'm...worth the time? The effort? You saw how he acts, he still sees me as some gang-banging idiot who got lucky pretending to be a soldier."

Liara nodded slowly. "His words hurt you. You worked so hard to be the best soldier you could – "

Shepard pulled a hand free, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Yeah. But he's right too, I know that...I'm not complaining. God, Liara, you saw how he took all three of us out like we were fucking volus. Wearing the same shitty armor I've been bitching about for years. I am just …"

Liara frowned, trying to make sense of Shepard's upset. "You are worried about more than not being ready?" She found herself wishing she could make more sense of the jangle of emotions coming through their bond, or that she knew more about how humans thought.

Shepard made an effort at calming down. "I...I'm just a little overwhelmed. Like I said. People keep thinking I am something I'm not, and I guess I had started to buy into the shit myself."

Liara scowled. "I disagree, Sara. I am perhaps borrowing your own bluntness and language, but I can think of no better way to respond than 'fuck these people.'"

Shepard looked at her, and then laughed. It was a good, clean laugh, and Liara smiled and squeezed Shepard's hand again. "I am no better than you at making sense of what we have fallen into, love. But I know that you have achieved a great deal. You lay the credit upon Tali, or myself, or your marines – but if not for you, I would be dead. Tali would be dead. More than likely, we would all be dead. No matter what failings you have, or what you feel you are not good at – _you saved us all."_

Liara almost shyly glanced up at Shepard. "Nothing Ahern can say, or the media, or your superiors, will change that. You claim you are no hero...but you are mine, and always shall be."

Shepard sighed, but Liara felt her happiness at that statement. Shepard rose, pausing to kiss Liara almost absently before pulling away and walking over to her desk. Sitting down in her chair bonelessly, she leaned back and closed her eyes. "Maybe."

Liara walked over as well, folding her arms. "Maybe?"

Shepard smiled. "It...it's more than just expectations. It's all the mess around everything." She swallowed. "Like us getting married. I haven't even really had time to process it. It's just words, but I know it is more than that, and I don't know how I'm supposed to react." She glanced up. "Does that make sense? I mean...fuck. That came out wrong, again. It's not that I don't want to, but..."

Liara thought about this. "I am not sure myself, Sara. Maidens simply do not bond, much less hand-fast. It is not something a maiden thinks on, and both Commissar Susan and Doctor Sedanya have made statements questioning if I am doing this for the right reasons."

The asari folded her arms, and stared into the eyes of her lover. "And I find I do not _care_ if my reasons are good or not. I am tired of stumbling through the wreckage of my life alone, and I know you are too, Sara. I am not doing this for my own safety from the Justicars, but because you need me. You will need me for the rest of your life. And I cannot find it in myself to love anyone else."

She looked down. "If that is a poor reason to hand-fast, then we will deal with the problems as they come. I have not...I do not know how to process everything I feel, or have been forced to learn, either, Sara. But I do not tear myself apart worrying about such, for it solves nothing."

Liara smiled faintly. "And it is not 'just words', although I do understand what you mean. This marriage, this hand-fasting – it is a ceremony. Nothing more. What we have – whatever that it may be called – is not defined by a ceremony."

Liara looked back up. "I will admit, however...I am happy to know that it is happening. Words can be very important things. Ceremonies can be a source of loving memories to light our way when all else is dark."

Shepard gave a little snort at that. "I know there are things I should be feeling, but...I'm a goddamned senior military officer, and I tell myself I should be thinking about other things than this. It's just stuck in my head."

She exhaled. "I'm sure Jiong would have some kind of pithy bullshit to say, but I don't know what else to describe what I'm feeling as 'tumbling'. I worry about if Tali is going to be okay, if this crazy bitch who worked for your mother is going to get us all killed, if I'm really good enough to be leading a task force. I worry I'm not grasping it all, and worried about ...just fucking everything! And when I try to focus on one thing, something else is a problem."

She smiled sourly. "And I end up thinking about getting married and futures and all that stuff...and it feels like I'm fucking off, I guess."

Liara shook her head. "You never got a chance to fantasize about being married to the person of your dreams, Sara. You have never indulged in what you wanted, or had the chance to have a dream and pursuit it and know it would be something that could happen. You are...focused on your job, and to me it is only natural that if you allow yourself to think of happier things that those things distract you from what must a confusing mess of responsibility and worry. "

Shepard made a slashing motion with her hand. "And that just sounds like a cop-out, Li. I'm trying not to run in place, you know? But I don't feel any better at putting things together than I was when this shit all started." She paused. "The shrinks never got what I meant when I said I didn't get it_. _I feel like I'm still not giving you the kind of ...support you need, and now we're getting married, and I am ..."

Liara smiled. "You worry you will be too distracted trying to deal with everything else to properly attend to me?"

Shepard nodded. "Something like that, I guess."

Liara smiled wider. "Sara, all I need is to know you love me, and that you need me. Susan constantly harps on the need for me to set goals beyond you, but she does not understand how broken we are. You are what I want. You do not need to change yourself for me. You do not need to worry that you will not be what I need – you already _are. _I have said it before."

Shepard sighed. "You changed yourself for me." She glanced away in self-disgust. "Into enjoying the sort of things I do. And putting up with the shit in my head. Why shouldn't I change? And I know you say I am what you need, but we both know that's not totally true. You have your own scars, and your own hurts, and I have to figure out how to help you get past it."

She frowned. "Jiong said something very important to me. That pain is the shit we want to change and can't figure out how to. There are things you've decided to change to help me. I have to do the same, but I don't know where to start, or what to change."

Liara shrugged. "I .. I see your point, but I also disagree. I am...changing, yes. I am changing because my goals have changed. You do not need to change because I do not need you to. The upset you have over what we do when we join..."

Liara sighed. "I would have thought you would be pleased by my acceptance of your tastes. "

Shepard buried her hands in her face. "I'm ...when we first bonded, I did this to you. "

Liara smiled. "There is nothing wrong what you do, Sara. And do you honestly think that you were in charge of our bonding? That was something we both needed."

Liara stood, walking quietly over to stand behind Shepard, gently rubbing her shoulders. "Doctor Sedanya finds it distasteful, in the narrow fashion that the Clans often do. I could care less of what people think of it – it is not for them to judge. But I assure you, it is no burden. You have needs, and frustrations, and neither of us is very good at letting go of our stress."

Shepard stifled a happy moan as Liara's fingers massaged away hard knots in her shoulder muscles. "So why do I feel so bad about it? And why are you...going along with it?"

Liara felt a slight blush, but her voice was calm enough. "Sara, many asari begin linking and melding with others in a sensual fashion when they turn sixty, or even younger. Most maidens have thoroughly experimented with their sexuality by the time they are my age. Did it ever occur to you that I was not myself pleased by forty years of self-stimulation?"

Shepard snorted back laughter. "And your reaction is to have me fuck your brains out every night?"

Liara shrugged, continuing to massage Shepard's shoulders. "You put so much importance on the act, rather than the emotions, than the closeness or the oneness."

Shepard shrugged. "I guess that's due to sex being the closest two humans can get to one another."

Liara nodded. "Which is logical, if somewhat depressing. You are all so ...lonely." She let her fingers trail through Shepard's hair, smiling. "To my people, it would be closer to a hug. A gesture of acceptance, but not true intimacy."

Shepard rubbed her eyes, and then her desk comm lit up. "Shepard here."

Jiong's carefully modulated voice spoke. "Major, I believe I spoke to you earlier regarding us having a discussion about your psychological state."

Shepard snorted. "Liara and I have been doing that for a while now. I've only managed to confuse myself more."

Jiong's voice took on a dry note. "Shocking. In any event, perhaps this would be a good time for you to speak with me, and Lady Liara to converse with Susan."

Liara shrugged. "It cannot hurt, Sara."

Shepard snorted. "May not help, either. I just don't have a lot of faith in psychiatric bullshit, Jiong. You can talk about shit, or you can do something about it. And when talking to the psychologists in the SA, they didn't give off much vibe about really giving a shit about me, so why bother with it?" She shrugged. "I'll come on down to wherever you want to have this talk, but only because so far you haven't been full of shit, not because I believe that psychology works."

Jiong's voice expressed exasperation. "I assure you that psychology works, Shepard, even if you think it doesn't. It works because people have been suffering the same traumas, problems, and issues for hundreds and hundreds of years. What stops it from working is when people refuse to give it a chance."

She stood, glancing at Liara before turning back to the comm panel. "Maybe. I know the shrinks I talked to didn't do a lick of fucking good."

He sighed, his voice sounding tired. "Shepard, military psychologists are there to clear you for duty. I know you thought they probably didn't 'give a shit' about you, but the real truth is simple – they had no way to help you without recommending you be removed from active duty – and for a Z2 from the Penal Legions, that is death. Their hands were tied. They did what little they could, indicating that you were not a sociopath or psychopath, that you felt remorse for your actions, and that you made hard choices because you were able to balance risk and reward, not out of mere crazy."

Liara winced, but could understand why they had done such things. "Perhaps a conversation would be good for you, Sara."

Jiong spoke calmly. "I do not plan to lay you on some couch and ask you about your feelings, Shepard. The very image is ridiculous. Since I'm getting rusty, I was thinking we could spar and talk."

Shepard grinned. "Alright, Jiong, you're on. I'll be in the ship's gym in twenty."

Liara smiled. "Tell Susan I will meet her in our usual location, Commissar Jiong."

"Of course, Lady Liara. I will also alert Doctor Sedanya to help Shepard when the beating is over with."

Shepard snorted back laughter. "Confidence won't stop punches, Jiong."

O-OSaBC-O

By the time Jiong had finished being beaten up by and talking to Shepard, showered, and changed, Susan was also done with Liara. The two commissars met in his quarters, him laying flat on his bed and her perched on the single chair. They had decided to meet to review notes on Shepard and Liara, but the commissar found himself almost unwilling to do so. Susan picked up on his reluctance from his expression.

"You look unhappy, Alfred."

Jiong sighed. "Shepard is rather conflicted. While I was able to extract a great deal of information, and finally get her to react on something approximating a healthy emotional level, there's so much damage and confusion I'm not sure how feasible our job really is."

He pulled up the record of their conversation on his omnitool to review it once more. "And you? Did your conversation go well?"

Susan nodded slowly. "It went smoothly enough, but I don't know that it went 'well'. To be honest, Lady Liara is not much better. If _one _of them was more squared away they might work out better, but as it is I think both of them are suppressing the negatives and worries and trying to cheer the other up. It's sweet, but not really effective. That's not even considering the long term mess."

Jiong nodded. "Shepard told me what she felt comfortable sharing about her relationship. Emotions are something she's still working on. She loves Liara, and likes finding out different ways to express that and explain what love is – both to herself and to Liara. She's grown very well in being able to at least

trust in that feeling. But extracting that was...messy. She's confused and has difficulty explaining how she reacts and emotes. "

Susan gave a faint nod, and Jiong continued. "But the flip-side is still rather dire. Her dependance on Liara has not waned, even a few weeks without melding made her nightmares return with crippling force. She has severe problems sleeping now without Liara around, and is agitated just by her being out of range of whatever bond they have."

Susan winced. "I've spoken to Doctor Sedanya regarding this, and it's liable to be a danger in the long term...but for now, there isn't much we can do. Shepard is already unstable, and if Liara provides stability –"

Jiong shook his head. "Not that simple, unfortunately. There are complications in their relationship. Each tries to be strong for the other, but as a result I think they both feel the other is not opening up fully. Liara has apparently become more reckless in their sexual activity, and it sounds as if their relationship is starting to get a bit fixated on sex. Shepard claims her own libido had faded once she'd indulged a few times, but Liara has only increased in her own desires."

Susan made a face. "Cry me a fucking river. No, seriously." She huffed, flipping her hair behind her shoulder, and Jiong laughed.

"It's a bit more complicated than that, I think. The two of them are trying the best to do what they think the other one wants. For Shepard, she was always ashamed of her inclinations, seeing them as wrong. To see Liara getting into them probably has her thinking she's 'corrupted' her or something along those lines. From her point of view – which simply must be very simplistic, given her lack of any real relationships of this nature – her purpose is to provide love, support, and affection, but she's not the best at showing those yet. So, she fumbles a bit."

Susan nodded. "While my discussions with Liara have already highlighted she sees things in a very asari fashion. She thinks they have time to learn each other, but she can tell Shepard has frustrations and sees offering herself up and molding herself to fit Shepard's needs is what she should be doing. Liara has no problems with the sort of things Shepard likes – as far as I can tell, she enjoys them immensely. As for libido, that isn't even the right word to use, Alfred. Sex is just not a big deal to them, at all. Liara just sees it as something Shepard needs."

Jiong frowned. "I would think this Doctor Sedanya would be of more use in discussing that sort of thing with Lady Liara. There has to be an equivalent to this sort of thing in asari culture..."

She tapped her chin. "There are very, very wide ranges of asari sexual deviancy, but I doubt most asari know about them since that's more the kind of thing outcast asari get into, rather than the ones in the Republics. Sedanya doesn't have any idea of how to deal with that kind of thing. The Clans are _very _restricted in a lot of ways. And honestly? Something like this isn't a topic most asari would touch with a ten foot pole. After all, kink isn't something everyone shares, and all the linking and melds would make you off-putting to other asari if you shared that kind of thing..."

Jiong arched an eyebrow. "I see. Well, that's completely unhelpful. We are the least suited people in the entire ship to be sexual counselors."

Susan laughed at that, and Jiong managed a smile in return. "And the rest of Lady Liara's thinking?"

Susan shrugged. "Disorganized mess, to be honest. She's a goddamned teen, no matter how old she is physically, in terms of emotional development. She crushed _hard _on Shepard, and now she's marrying her, which is pretty much the first time she's put her mind to something and actually gotten it. She had a lot of stuff thrown at her – from her House, the asari government – on top of having her mom go bonkers, and she can't really cope with it all yet. She instead focuses on learning her job and on making sure Shepard is happy."

Susan bit her lip. "I feel sorry for her, in a way. She pushed herself pretty hard in this training because she felt useless to Shepard. That's also why she's probably throwing herself at Shepard in bed, too. She doesn't feel like she can do much to help Shepard's emotional issues except by bonding and being closer to her." She paused. "And she's not that much better in handling what she feels, really, than Shepard is. She doesn't just have to deal with her emotions, but that of Shepard, and since she's the one in control of the bond, she has to try to manage all of that. She doesn't have the skill yet, and probably won't for a long time."

Jiong sighed. "And here I thought asari were masters at that sort of thing. Ah, well."

Susan shrugged. "And going back to the libido thing...eh. Shepard is just not used to looking at it like asari do. It's like brushing your teeth for them. I cannot believe she is _bitching _about it. Ungrateful..." She trailed off in muttering.

Jiong laughed dryly. "I'll pass along your disgruntlement."

Susan arched an eyebrow at him. "You don't feel the same?"

Jiong gave a weak shrug. "I...am just happy she is not as trapped as I. Or you."

Susan nodded and glanced away, and the silence became uncomfortable, until Jiong spoke with forced calm and cheer. "From a strictly performance based viewpoint, everything is going well, though, yes?"

Susan nodded. "I would say so. I dislike reporting on any of this because I'm not sure it has any bearing on their performance as officers. Shepard and Liara are certainly less...well, messed up...than they were when hunting down Saren. And if Shepard can keep unconsciously inspiring loyalty in others, I doubt there will be any performance issues. Their emotional problems and what they get up to in bed is beyond the concerns of the Commissariat."

Jiong shot her a flat look. "There are some in the Guidance Cadre who will disagree with that last statement, but I tend to agree for the most part. In the end, it does not matter what the Cadre thinks. As long as Shepard does her duties efficiently and doesn't raise a ruckus in the media, they are unlikely to truly care about what we fail to include in our reports – and if she fails, I doubt us including it will stave off their wrath."

He closed his eyes. "I have had to do enough distasteful things in my career without going over the specifics of my friend's sex life and emotional problems. Perhaps the Cadre will show...decency."

Susan snorted. "Yeaaaah, because decency is right up there with the other big Commissariat values of Obedience, Doublespeak, and Burning Shit to Death."

Jiong merely sighed, eyes still closed. "There's no need to be catty about it."


	14. Chapter 14 : Captives and Coughing

_**A/N:** Sorry about the delays, as I needed to get feedback from several people regarding this chapter, none of who agreed on it. Some argued it should be scrapped entirely and others suggested it was perfect. I have made a handful of small modifications to fit the feedback. I've had a lot of thoughts about this chapter, as bits of it were originally from as far back as chapter of what it originally contained (more details about SA fleet politics, a clearer explanation of exactly what was refitted, an expansion on SA technology and asari interaction with it) was removed as it didn't advance the story.  
_

_That being said, the whole point of the ATTWN arc isn't to advance the story so much as explain what happened and why. For those of you who wanted a bit more context, and who suggested at least one more non-Shepard focused chapter, here it is. It will undoubtedly generate additional questions, but that's why it is written.  
_

_The next chapter ends Shepard's training, and then there is a transition piece from Pinnacle to Arcturus. The chapter after that ends Arc I. Those of wishing for !**ACTION**! will have it, those of you dissapointed in the loss of fluff will have to endure :) _

_As always, if you have questions about some of what is referenced here, leave a review or PM and I will answer as fast as I can. :)_

* * *

__'Politics? Shit. That's when a person with two good eyes and perfectly good hearing manages not to fucking see or hear anything they disagree with.'  
__

__ – Matriarch Aethyta Vasir, 'Oh, Now You Want to Hear My Wisdom?'  
__

* * *

_DOWNLOADING: Data feed, prime broadcast segment 117_

_Manifest dump 84570-core alpha, unclassified_

_This is an official Systems Alliance data capture dump, replication or rebroadcast is restricted._

_Transcript begins, identifiers J: al-Jilani C: Saracino R: Sandemar_

_Keywords: Citadel, geth, Systems Alliance, Shepard, Branson, Cerberus_

BEGIN:

"Westerlund news! All the news, fit or unfit to print, 24/7!"

J: Good afternoon. I'm **Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani**, Westerlund News Network. Today we are interviewing two very special members of our government : Minister of the Interior Charles Saracino, and the leader of the Blue Stars No More political party, Rachel Sandemar. Welcome to the show!

C: Delighted.

R: [nods]

J: Minister Saracino, let me start with you, although this may be something Ms. Sandemar wishes to express her opinion on as well. There's been a great deal of upset and speculation recently over the promotions offered to two of humanity's greatest warriors, Rear Admiral Branson and Major-Commander Shepard. Quite a few people don't feel they are warranted, what is your opinion?

C: In the case of our new High Admiral, I think he is quite fitted to the position. I've never been sold on the military insistence that the person best suited to lead the Admiralty should be someone who hasn't been on the front lines in fifteen years. Rear Admiral Branson has demonstrated he has the leadership and vision to guide our fleet, and a lack of rank merely means he's closer in perspective to our brave service-people.

C: [Pauses, then shrugs] As for Major-Commander Shepard, I think and have always thought the woman is a disgrace. We'll leave aside her sordid past, the fact that she gets most of her men killed in her commands, and the fact that she spends the majority of her time consorting with aliens. My biggest problem with the Butcher is that she's being promoted out of a role she is finally good at – killing the enemies of humanity – and into something she has no skills in. Why would you do that...except as a quid pro quo. Shepard knows something, or found out something, and the SA is trying to keep her quiet! That's why all this hullaboo.

J: A curious point, to be sure. There are more than a few who have suggested that Shepard is hardly suited for large-scale command, given her past history and lack of command training. Others are highly offended she has been raised to the ranks of the nobility. Do you have any thoughts on these issues?

C: [scratches chin] Let's take the second part first, shall we? I'm not real big on nobility. They do have a useful function in our governance, but the less involved they are the better things are going. The fact that they made the Butcher a noble is a good laugh. She has no background in it, she is completely uneducated, and to top it all off, rumor says she's sterile. To me, it's a bribe mixed with a backhanded joke. They know she can't really do anything with the position, but they can make happy noises about how the common man can rise.

This at the same time the cost to move to class II citizen has jumped another six percent.

As far as her command? Like I said, it's nonsense. The woman knows about as much in regards to commanding that kind of force as I do. We're not being told something, and I hate it when my taxpayer credits get up and go without telling me why they got up and went.

J: [laughter] Very apt points. Ms. Sandemar, do you have any thoughts on these issues?

R: Yes, thank you. I don't want to be disrespectful to anyone, but I am not happy with either of these two being rewarded for anything. Shepard is a failure. She was on Eden Prime and didn't stop the deaths of our colonists and servicemen. She was on Feros and didn't stop the destruction of our colony and a corporate enclave. She went to Noveria and the place became a bloodbath, and her actions at the Citadel – ordering Admiral Hackett to save the Council Fleet – cost us thousands of human lives. No one has explained why they are giving her a battle-group, much less when she will be held accountable for the all the lives she's ruined or ended.

R: [folds arms] As for Branson, until he pulls our military back from gross adventuring and focuses on demilitarizing the Systems Alliance, he's not any better.

J: [arches an eyebrow] Given that if we had a smaller military, the geth would have destroyed everything on Terra Nova, how can you justify the position of Blue Stars No More?

R: We wouldn't have had any losses if we didn't have our fleet scattered all over creation. If people don't love the SA, and if they decide to run out to colonies to get away from it, then they should be left to fend for themselves. Our position hasn't changed – if we disengage from the Citadel and pull back to our core colonies, then there is no reason for anyone to bother us and force our soldiers to die. We'd have more than enough ships already to protect what we have.

C: With all due respect, that is simply not feasible. While Terra Firma agrees that useless expansionism and the size of our fleet are both out of control, the answer isn't to let the aliens dominate the galaxy. Letting the aliens surround us just makes us vulnerable. Since we've been shanghaied into having a place on the Council, we should have their military safeguard our outlying colonies while we clean up our own forces.

R: The problem with that answer, Mr. Saracino, is that the militarist thugs are going to use it for their own ends. I know you're opposed to anything that weakens humanity – but us throwing money and lives at this issue isn't going to magically stop the alien domination of the galaxy – they already do! We need to rethink and retrench, and stop getting our service-people killed.

J: There are those who suggest the geth threat is not over – turian forces fought a fierce battle yesterday near the border of their space with a large force of geth. Given that both TF and BSNM are pushing for military draw downs and reductions, how do you respond to the criticism leveled by the NDP, namely that without a stronger military we would be at risk from batarian aggression?

R: I don't believe that. Again, if we simply pull back from the Traverse and the Verge, which we can't protect anyway, we will have far fewer military deaths and losses. I don't really care about the stupid wildcatters – they don't contribute to the SA

C: I'd like to point out that when Cerberus was active, it was doing a fine job of protecting those colonies, letting our military focus on other issues. I think the NDP is fishing for trouble, using the scare tactics of batarian slavers to frighten people, but let's be honest. Batarian technology is barely on par with our own, and much of it is crumbling due to the embargo.

J: And in regards to Cerberus, there remains a great deal of controversy over that group. Most shockingly, the fall of the Northstar party, which was revealed to mostly be a Cerberus front. You alone have not changed your position on Cerberus, Minister – why is that?

C: To a point I have. I remain unconvinced by Shepard's video 'evidence' of atrocities – by the time independent media got to the site, it was swarmed by both AIS and aliens, who could have planted any sorts of atrocity onto Cerberus. And I find it really curious that if they were such a threat, neither the AIS or the Commissars ever managed to shut them down.

C: [Folds arms] I'd be a lot more swayed – or concerned – if the other species weren't doing equally reprehensible acts.

J: The main question on everyone's mind right now is exactly what will happen in the upcoming March primaries for the Senate, since those elections only happen once a decade. The Court of Lords will be assembling to put together the slates next week, and it's difficult to determine what the outcome will be. Rumor suggests, however, that they are more alien-friendly than they were ten years ago. How will this make things difficult for the current administration?

C: [smiles] Since the Senate is more occupied with diplomacy than the House is, I would surmise that they will have to deal with reality, no matter how 'alien-friendly' their membership may be. I don't think it will affect things very much.

J: There is also anticipation from our asari citizens about the possibility of an asari Senator...

C: [nods] Yes, that's probably going to happen. Terra Firma has always said Humanity First, and that certainly hasn't changed. But TF has also taken a good hard look at the asari citizenship. Unlike the other aliens who live in our space, the asari are at least trying to fit into human norms and values, instead of that godless whore culture they come from. Most of them are not welcome back home, and they don't have anywhere else to go.

C: [rubs chin] I'm not wild about the idea, I won't lie. But I'm not going to try to block it, and neither is TF. We're not bigots, and we're more than happy to wait and see.

J: Ms. Sandemar?

R: I don't have any problems with them, since most of them take the long view that violence and militarism is bad.

J: Both of your parties have come under sharp fire in recent days. In particular, a large number of military people, both enlisted and officers, were on the ANN recently blaming both TF and BSNM for defense cuts that resulted in many SA casualties at Terra Nova. And the recent demonstrations and counter-pickets of BSNM rallies has been rapidly increasing in the past few weeks. Ms. Sandemar, could you comment on this?

R: [grimaces] There will always be someone too blind to face reality, Ms. Al-Jilani. We're not going to compromise what we believe simply because others disagree.

J: The attacks on Eden Prime and Feros, and the devastation at Terra Nova, would seem to be more than 'disagreement',

R: And? The bottom line doesn't change. BSNM doesn't care about anything but stopping our families from being murdered by the poor decision making of our government and the military. Because that is more important than profits, or the whim of the nobles, or the desires of the corporations. What happened on Eden Prime and Feros wouldn't have changed even if we had three times as many ships. But the people who died there will be used as excuse for the SA to spend more money on wild militaristic adventuring.

J: That's all the time we have for now, but stay tuned for our contact segment, where we take live chat from the extranet and questions for Minister Saracino.

O-ATTWN-O

Okeer awoke to pain, an unusual sensation for him to experience. He found himself still clothed, but his partial armor had been stripped, and his wounds only hastily patched with what felt like cheap medigel.

He glanced around, finding himself laying on a hard metal floor, in what was obviously some kind of containment cell. Three stark metallic walls contained him, each thickly armored. A kinetic barrier sealed the open side of the cell, and beyond it lay a krogan-sized stasis pod of white metal, cracked open.

He quickly checked himself for weapons, finding his holdouts and omnitool removed. That was of lesser concern than the fact that his labs were smashed and all of his research lost. He could of course begin again, but the loss of notes, samples and most of all the genetic data accumulated over centuries was a serious setback.

He had backed up some of his data in various caches, but with the CDEM in the hands of the damnable Eclipse, he'd not stayed on Tuchanka, instead heading for what he believed to be the safety of Saren's tiny colony of indoctrinated turians. There, he'd expected to be undisturbed for at least the few weeks it would have taken to finalize his research.

He'd had no reason to prepare for a full out assault.

The fact that he had recognized the force coming for him had left him little time to attempt to salvage anything, and he had not bothered, instead hoping to leave clues to his fate. He'd been able to leave only two such clues: a hasty message to Ylana he'd hurled behind his desk to conceal it, and the spilled blood of the giant, heavy cybernetically adjusted salarian who'd actually beaten him down like a child in close combat.

Given the Shadow Broker's well known penchant for careful attention to detail, he doubted either bit of evidence had survived. Ylana was expecting him to come to her location; it would be some time before she sent a force to see if he was alive. By then, the Hierarchy might have already moved in. Even if she did find it, he had no real clues as to the size of her forces, and assaulting the Shadow Broker was simply impossible in any case. His only real hope was that Ylana would attempt to negotiate his release.

Given the very long life he'd had, the idea of it suddenly ending was less frightening than he expected.

He gingerly stood, shaking off the nausea and weakness of long-term stasis, and glanced around again at his location. He could see very little of the corridor beyond, only the bulk of the stasis pod and the black-paneled corridors that lead off to the right.

Given that his cell was of a size to contain krogan, he doubted he would be able to beat down the kinetic barrier manually. Even as he contemplated the chances, however, he heard slow, heavy footfalls, punctuated by a hard tapping noise.

A black-cloaked figure came into view, leaning on an equally dark cane. Clearly turian, it was occluded in plates of black armor where the cloak gaped open, and the hood was lit dimly from within by a single glowing red cybernetic eye, illuminating a faint tracery of red facial paint and horrible scars.

The figure came to a slow halt in front of the cell, and Okeer could literally hear the machinery inside the turian clicking and humming along, the slow rasp of artificial lungs and pumps. The turian stood silently, as if waiting for something, then merely tapped the cane once more, as if to attract attention with the hollow booming noise it made against the floor.

Okeer suppressed a sigh. _Turian melodrama._

The turian's voice was a low, baritone rasp, whispery and cold. "Ganar Okeer, eldest of the krogan. We require some information that you possess."

Okeer gave a contemptuous exhalation. "And you must be Tetrimus, the so-called Mouth of the Shadow Broker. I do not care for what you or your master wish, turian. You have ruined my work, and for that I would rather die than cooperate with you."

Tetrimus sighed. "We do not have time for your intransigence, Doctor. We wish to speak with the Collectors, and you have a connection to them. You will divulge this."

Okeer gave a guffaw of amused, cultured laughter. "I see. And _who_ exactly told you that I could get in contact with the Collectors, mm?"

Tetrimus shook his head. "I am asking the questions. Comply and we may spare you."

Okeer sighed. "Turian, you were never accounted as stupid in the stories I have heard of you, so I am surprised at this turn of events. First, whoever told you such a thing is a fool and a liar. The only communication I was able to make with the Collectors was through the aegis of Benezia's people, with whom I had a mutually beneficial deal. In fact, if not for your assault upon my works, I would have already departed to form my first connection with them – something that is impossible now."

The krogan folded his arms. "Second, I know full well how the Broker operates. You do not use such force as you unleashed upon me unless pressed or reacting to betrayal, and you leave no one alive to tell tales in any event. So, please, spare me your idiot threats. I have no chance of leaving this cell alive, regardless of my cooperation with you, and it amuses me to instead deny you whatever it is that you wish."

Tetrimus said nothing, merely gazing at the krogan for long seconds, before turning away without another word. Okeer watched him go, rubbing his muzzle in thought, listening to his retreating footfalls and the tap of the cane.

At least the turian wasn't stupid enough to try torture. His mind turned instead to how he'd gotten in this predicament in the first place.

The only people who would have known about Okeer's intentions in meeting with the Collectors directly were Benezia's people – and possibly the Shifter. But it made little sense for the Broker and the Shifter to save his life on the Citadel and aid him in getting away, only to double cross him later. And he doubted Ylana had sold him out, as there was no benefit to her in such an act.

That implied a third party, someone with deep knowledge of Saren and Benezia's plans, but who was not allied with them. Possibly the Broker had captured geth, or maybe Cerberus operatives,who were for some reason aware of his activities. He was not sure how loosely Saren had held his association with him, and it was likely that the cunning Spectre had laid plans in case Okeer had turned on him.

In the long view, who had sold him out was irrelevant. The only things left for Okeer to determine was exactly how to get out of this mess. He spent the next hour contemplating his plans, assuming that he somehow got out of what looked like certain death, before the turian returned. This time the turian was accompanied by a floating omni-sphere, which illuminated the area in golden light as it bobbed alongside the turian biotic.

Once again, Tetrimus came to a stop, tapping the drone once. "He is here, sir, the krogan."

The voice that issued from the drone was clearly modulated, but there was a growling power behind the voice, and the words, one that immediately caught Okeer's attention.

"I rarely conduct business myself, but this situation requires a more direct approach. I am the Shadow Broker."

Okeer's eyes narrowed. "I was under the general impression that you did not communicate directly with your … clients."

"You are not a client. At best, you are a possible asset – at worst, a loose end. It will be up to you and what you tell me to determine which of these two paths I send you down."

Okeer sneered. "I have little trust in your words, Broker. You are not known for leaving loose ends, as you just referred to me as."

The voice rumbled. "Perhaps. But I see things that others do not, from a perspective that is unique. It is vital that we speak with or establish communication with the Collectors. The only possible conduit to such seems to be through you, and from you to whichever of Benezia's subordinates has contact with them. Should that require leaving you alive, then as long as you accede to my desires, your life will not be threatened."

Okeer folded his arms, glaring at the drone. "Your desires mean nothing to me. The actions you undertook to capture me destroyed the very research the Collectors were interested in, leaving them no reason to bother contacting me."

The voice grew agitated. "Explain."

Okeer's muzzle twisted. "I have nothing better to do, and perhaps you will execute your incompetent minions once you learn the tale. I provided Saren with krogan for experimentation, in return for certain genetic samples. These samples were used to attempt to modify the genophage's secondary effects."

The drone hovered. "I fail to see the connection to the Collectors. My time is valuable."

Okeer laughed. "It is related. The research was lengthy and meticulous. Towards the end of the saga of Saren, he and Benezia promised me access to certain materials that would aid my goals, materials provided by the Collectors. While on the Citadel when Benezia attacked, I actually met briefly with two of them, who provided me with scans of a modified krogan."

He folded his arms. "After the Citadel was reclaimed, I fled to continue my work. Benezia's aide, Ylana, reached out to me, hoping to continue her mistress' work. I agreed to help her if she could contact the Collectors for more data or a meeting."

Okeer exhaled, grimacing. "Ylana informed me that they would agree to meet if I had something of value to offer in trade, so I gathered together several infertile females and began the process to bypass the genophage. I figured that would get their interest."

At this, Tetrimus started. "You can do that?"

Okeer sneered, his voice dismissive. "Salarian design of the genophage was based on the krogan I gave to them, and updated periodically. As a result, I am fully aware of how the genophage works. I discovered long ago how to use certain enzymatic reactions to create a secondary protein shell over the malformed progression sites the genophage uses to induce miscarriages. It is how I have kept the Ganar clan in numbers."

The voice of the Broker was almost soft. "And yet you have never shared such with the krogan."

Okeer's sneer widened. "The krogan are too stupid to understand the salarians saved them. Krogan breeding rates would have led to us to conflict, and the salarians were trying to come up with a genetic alteration to genocide the krogan. My answer gave them an alternative, reducing birth rates to what they would have been on Tuchanka without modern medicine."

Okeer shook his head. "Curing my race of this mercy is stupid and unworkable, and has never been my goal. A cure does nothing for the krogan, and until shared suffering and misery breaks their spirit, will never be offered. What I want is to change the fundamental nature of the krogan...and that is why I needed the Collectors."

The Broker's voice sounded again. "And so you made your deal with this Ylana..."

Okeer glared. "Yes. And I was attempting to work with the idea the Collectors gave me, in order to pique their interest, when your servants attacked, killing my only subordinate who understood my work, wrecking my research and destroying my gift. It will take unknown years to get back to where I was."

The Broker's drone was silent for long seconds, then spoke. "And where is this Ylana?"

Okeer laughed. "I have no idea. I was supposed to meet with her at a system of her choosing, but given that the system in question has no habitable planets, I doubt it is her actual base of operations. Ylana did not entirely trust me, after all."

The drone whirled in place for a second. "Something does not fit."

Tetrimus shrugged. "From what little we know, the Collectors have been monitoring genetic drift in the species of the galaxy for more than five thousand years. Given their technology level, prior to that it would have been simple for them to perform direct abductions to the same ends."

The voice from the drone growled. "Which fails to explain what they want with a krogan geneticist." The drone bobbed in the air. "Tetrimus, have our guest fed while we consider our next course of action." The drone flew down the corridor, and Tetrimus sighed.

Okeer was baffled by the short conversation, and more by the Broker's questions. As he watched the turian slowly hobble away, tapping something on his omnitool, he began to wonder exactly why the Broker wanted to contact the Collectors so badly.

O-ATTWN-O

The smooth, cold stone arches of the Temple of Athame Everlasting gleamed softly in the moonlight, the ancient carvings of moon, star, and sun over the great doorway as sharp and precise as they were tens of thousands of years ago.

Matriarch Aethyta had not been to a formal meeting of the Council of Matriarchs in over a century, although she had talked to them informally several times. Having to appear in person was either an insult or a compliment, and she was too wave-damned tired to figure out which it might be.

As usual, the place was locked down hard – commandos everywhere, gunships in patrol patterns, and weapons emplacements and snipers dug in just out of sight. The four commandos escorting her were the Temple's own force, the Sisterhood of the Sun, the personal guard of the High Solarch. There was a message there too, but Aethyta didn't care for it.

The doors to the Temple, gigantic planks of ancient agnar wood stiffened with kinetic barriers and nano-infused carbon steel, swung open silently, moved by two acolytes with their biotics. The huge cathedral beyond was the usual – a giant dome, with niches off to the side set with strange and arcane artifacts, and the giant statue of Athame, her features so heavy stylized that her crests were one solid mass, staring down. The veil over her features and the heavy armor and robes of the statue gave it a militant, expectant mien.

Heavy pillars, carved with thousands of tiny inscriptions of faith, formed a wide circle around the center of the Temple, given over to the Altar of the Sun, the ritual resting place for the Sword and Shield of Athame. The center of the chamber – normally where the High Priestess of the Sun preached from – had been cleared, with thirty chairs set into a wide semicircle and a small standing platform in their midst.

Aethyta adjusted her shawl and robes, and firming her jaw, marched directly to the platform, stepping atop it and folding her arms defiantly.

Thirty ancient faces stared back at her, a bewildering array of facial markings and colors from the blue of the sea-coast to the purples of the mountains. The shapes on the shawls decried their houses – the shantha, the sword, the boat, the yul hawk, the relli snake. A dazzling array of colors decorated each matriarch, hands resting casually on warp swords or fixed in gestures of siari patience and expectation.

In the background, the pacing forms of barely-clothed war priestesses could be seen, each one trailed by a tech-commando searching out listening devices or other technological trickery. As she stood upon the platform, four more such priestesses raised their hands, erecting a bubble of kinetic energy over the group, the barrier field nullifying vibrations and sounds outside of its radius.

The Council of Matriarchs was in session.

She glanced at her sister, Uthana, now the Matriarch of the Vasir, who gave her a single arch nod, and then over to her oldest friend, Matriarch Jenta Vabo, who shot her a sour grin. With a huff, she straightened and fixed her gaze dead into that of the center of the assembly.

Queen Matriarch Thana T'Armal.

Aethyta waited several seconds before speaking. "Well, I'm here. I doubt you wanted to see me any more than I wanted to see you, so let's get this over with."

There were several exasperated huffs and offended sneers, but more than one snicker or smirk. Matriarch Thana glanced around the circle, silencing them, then spoke.

"You have been called forth to explain the actions of your daughter, and the … missive … you have brought of her changed allegiances."

To her right, the hard features of Matriarch Iasela T'Vaan twisted."She has decided to join the other outcasts in the Systems Alliance. Such is worrisome when the clanless do so, and irritating when a Clan member breaks their sacred trusts, but for a ranking member of the Thirty to do so is intolerable."

Aethyta sneered at her. "Who let you in here, Iasela? Isn't your trampy little niece Shaltha supposed to be taking over soon?"

Iasela glared. "She is not … mature enough for this meeting, but then again neither are you. Explain why your offspring embarrasses us all."

Aethyta's sneer deepened. "Fucking spare me. None of you wanted her around because Benezia and I had the poor taste to do in public what the rest of you clowns have done in private. Because she's a pure-blood, you would have never let her take her birthright. Now she's gone and you're still fucking complaining?"

Iasela folded her arms. "What is this pack of shatha droppings? Of course we can't have a wave-damned pureblood in charge of a House of the Thirty. We've kept the purebloods we have out of sight, letting them act in ways that don't attract attention! Your fool stunt ended up causing massive backlash from the clanless who wanted to experiment with the old ways. The Exodus can be laid at _your feet."_

Aethyta tapped a fingernail hard against the hilt of her warp sword in irritation. "You wanna blame me for the fact your goddess-damned social engineering fuckery didn't work? Because Benezia and I had a kid?"

Matriarch Uressa made a delicate and elaborate version of the sign of siari agreement. "Beloved Aethyta, you of all people must know others of the Thirty do not do such things with the accorded heir to the Houses. I believe that if you and our fallen friend Benezia had simply borne Liara, even as the firstborne, no one would have gainsaid your acts. But Benezia's decision to set Liara as the chatelaine, to shape her as the heir, and to openly announce both her status as pureblood and her state as heir was perhaps ...unwise."

The beautiful asari matriarch sighed almost woefully. "Sadly, the fact that she is still matria-desginate of House T'Soni is also concern. There is a troubling amount of unrest in the outer colonies already, and if she should return to lead House T'Soni, the Exodus might become more pronounced."

Matriarch Suliasa snorted. "Little Wing knew what she was doing as soon as she decided to go along with this plan Shepard cooked up. I tried to get the human to make sure Liara knew what she was giving up, but the bottom line is that I can't just hand her back the House if she shows up now. She's joined their military and sworn oaths. That's... tied my hands. Her ever leading our House now is not a thing that can happen unless she completely breaks ties with the humans, as sad as I am to say it."

Aethyta shrugged. "Like she wants to come back here anyway."

Suliasa scowled blackly at Aethyta. "She wasn't opposed to the idea earlier. Of course, Goddess knows what sort of lies and garbage you've filled her head with."

Matriarch Uthana Vasir hissed. "While my sister may or may not have made critical errors in her past that lead to her being removed as House Matriarch, that is no excuse to attack her. She was the only one of us with the bravery to face Benezia in person, aside from Liara. Matriarch Suliasa says the girl is gone for good, so what is the concern here?"

Matriarch Thana exhaled. "The concern is that the Error that lead to Trellani's … abandonment may be at work here. It makes little sense for Liara to cast aside her House and all the power of a Matria for a single human female."

Murmurs followed this statement. The ugly and dark truth about the outcast Matriarch Trellani had shaken them all. The insane asari was murdering members of the Thirty, selling off their secrets and plotting their downfall.

Aethyta shook her head. "No. I did a careful and searching link to Liara right after Benezia's death, while we were in the hospital. Her main reason for wanting to leave _was_ to be with her bondmate, her secondary reason was that she felt outcast. Trellani is not even a name she knows save by distant rumor."

Matriarch Thesin Devir snorted. "She abandoned her birthright for a human woman?"

Aethyta snarled. "No, Devir. She abandoned a Family that treated her like garbage for a woman who valued and loved her. She abandoned a government that wanted her hounded by the Justicars and hung out to the tides for the mistakes of a brainwashed and dominated victim for one that sees her as valuable and heroic. Most of all she abandoned a people she never got! She _didn't fit in_. She wasn't any good at being one of us, maybe because of the way she grew up."

Aethyta folded her arms. "This entire fucking mess can be laid at my feet if you like. I'm a bad aithntar, a bad bondmate, and I was a shitty House Matriarch. But Liara isn't your concern anymore, unless you are literally willing to start a war over satisfying the baying of a pack of tide-damned _clanless_."

More murmuring broke out at that, subtle whispers and more than one quick joining of hands for a split-second meld-discussion. The only one to speak was the elderly Matriarch Yulsanis T'Purice, her voice almost rough with age.

"It is well and good to say that this girl-child is no more a threat. But the results are worse. The Exodus will see her as one of the Thirty who has turned from the wisdom of the Council of Matriarchs just as they have, and flock to her for leadership. The humans have, after all, made this Shepard person one of their own nobles – are we to believe this isn't in reaction to their bonding? The humans will use her to lead the Exodus asari in their own space, and their thinking cannot be allowed back into the Republic."

Aethyta saw where this was headed, and bit her tongue. The Exodus was certainly a mess, the backlash of millions of asari who didn't fit in with the greater culture, who didn't want to be paired with turians or salarians or hanar. They wanted humans, who looked like them and who seemed by divine design to be partners, or more likely wanted to bond and have children with other asari.

Unfortunately, the asari were learning that certain aspects of human culture clashed very hard with asari culture. The human drive for independence, individuality, and aggressive competition disrupted asari communal values, and threatened the absolute control over the asari that the Thirty had maintained for years. The original answer to this problem was to ship the asari affected by such off to the Systems Alliance.

That had backfired spectacularly – what was supposed to be perhaps ten or fifteen thousand outcasts had swelled to nineteen million, with millions more seeking to apply for SA citizenship. The problem wasn't the actual numbers, per se. Given the asari population, the result wasn't even a percent of the population.

Nor was the problem merely contact with humans. Tens of millions of asari had melded or linked with humans with no ill effects.

The problem was bonds, as many asari bonded to humans … changed. They became less willing to endure the social maneuvering, less willing to engage in free-for-all sexual exchanges, less understanding of the viewpoints of others. Not all asari fell to this, but enough did that the Thirty feared such viewpoints – and the trouble they caused – becoming widespread.

With no other choices, the Thirty had begun to seal off the flow of such asari, while taking strong lines with the SA to ensure their asari citizens never came back into asari space. That had only been partially successful, and the Exodus had grown in size.

But so far it was mostly clanless, with a tiny handful of Clan members participating. Only a few Lesser house members had taken citizenships in the SA, and most of those were noble marriages. No member of the Thirty had ever done such.

Aethyta finally sighed and shrugged. "Liara may well end up being a figure they expect leadership from, but they won't get it. She doesn't connect very well with them, and she hates the idea of being forced into some kind of role by circumstances. I'll let her know that getting involved with them is not a good idea, if that will help."

The murmurs continued, until a hand motion from Matriarch Thana silenced the Hall.

"If you assure us that Liara has not fallen to the ideals of Trellani nor the Exodus, then there is little we can do to halt this … rebellion of your daughter. But make her aware that she will not be granted the right of return. By avoiding the traditional methods, by turning aside the Question, and by taking a stand with her human bondmate, she has effectively removed herself from the placement as chatelaine of House T'Soni."

Matriarch Suliasa folded her arms, sighing unhappily. "I will agree...but with protest. She is _young_ and without her mother, Matriarch Thana. In a century she could deeply regret this act."

Matriarch Iasela sneered. "In a century she will still be a pureblood, Matriarch Suliasa."

Aethyta made a disgusted nod. "Fine, not like she will give a damn. Are you clowns going to rein in the Justicars now?"

Matriarch Thana leaned back in her seat. "Mistress Layana has already been informed. For now, the issue is … resolved. The official word given out to the media has been that Benezia was led astray, that she may have been mentally and emotionally compromised, and that her daughter avenged her crimes upon her body. The recording from the Citadel was edited before it was displayed for public viewing, and stops at Liara overpowering Benezia and sending her to the ground."

Aethyta nodded. "If that's all, I have to get moving in order to make it back to human space with a few guests."

Matriarch Thana gave a sign to the four war priestesses, who let the kinetic bubble fall. "Then our business is completed. Aethyta, a moment, if you will."

The other matriarchs rose gracefully and departed, while Aethyta stepped up to stand in front of the T'Armal leader. "Yeah?"

Thana sighed. "I dislike the direction your daughter moves in. Many will simply not believe the tale of the wayward daughter."

Aethyta shrugged. "They don't have to believe it. I'm sure it's hard to get through your crest that someone is actually, honestly not interested in this relli-nest of backstabbing and gossip, but there you go."

The asari queen made a throwing away motion with her hands. "Not many outside of an echas novel would throw way a fortune and a life of luxury to take up service with an alien military."

Aethyta gave a slow smirk. "You remember your first really hard meld, where you just couldn't stop flaring?"

Matriarch Thana nodded. "Of course, I would think every asari does."

Aethyta nodded in return. "Liara's first was Shepard, and she hadn't linked or melded with anyone else. And they didn't just bond, they pretty much soulforged the first time."

The other matriarch took a sharp indrawn breath. "That is incredibly stupid and risky for a maiden barely a century old."

Aethyta shrugged. "I agree, but what's done is done. Liara's not even going to think of coming back until Shepard's dead and buried, and if she can survive fucking all the shit already thrown at her, that's likely to be a while. By that time, the Exodus will either be a done deal, or you'll have more important things to think about."

The T'Armal matriarch gave a sour nod to this. "As you say, what's done is indeed done. Grant her my best wishes on a happy and long-lived bonding, and impress on her the need for circumspection."

Aethyta rolled her eyes. "Coming from me, that should be a hoot. You sending someone to observe the ceremony?"

Thana made a motion of siari negation. "Manifestly not. It would send the wrong message. I have no idea why Uressa is going, but one member of the House of Storms should be enough honor for such an event."

Aethyta straightened her shawl. "Fine, then." She turned to leave, and Thana smiled.

"One more thing, Matriarch Aethyta. Given your strained relationship with House Vasir, your duties in watching my daughter on Omega can be … set aside for now. Monitor Liara on behalf of the Council of Matriarchs." Her voice hardened. "And while I pray to Athame that it should never come to pass, should Liara turn to the ways of Benezia, or Trellani, you will have to handle the situation."

Aethyta gave the other asari an icy, hateful look before giving a single stiff nod. "That will never fucking happen, but I'll do it, if only so you stupid fools can pay my expenses on Arcturus or wherever she ends up."

Thana rose from her seat, regal and cool. "And we will be happy to pay such a pittance for security and caution. Go with the grace of our Goddess, and fair and pleasant travels, Aethyta."

Aethyta suppressed yet another derisive snort in favor of simply departing. Thana watched her, and after a moment the graceful form of Uressa T'Shora emerged from the shadows, her features saddened.

She carefully touched Thana's shoulder, offering a small and gentle smile. "This anger is unlike you, Sea Lily. Liara's choices are her own, and she is not Aleena."

Thana's jaw tightened, and she exhaled. "I know that, Uressa. That doesn't make her acts any more easy to explain, or tolerable. And it doesn't help that you are going to participate in this farce."

The beautiful asari matriarch's smile faltered only slightly. "I am not going to ostracize her simply to accede to the wishes and beliefs of others when she has done nothing wrong. Liara is brave, she is likely hurt badly by the loss of her mother, and she will feel alone and unwanted by her own people. None of us deserve that, when they have committed no crime save that of being the person they are."

Thana made a gesture of siari separation in jerky, angry movements. "And the impression it gives others? Is that of no importance?"

Uressa leaned against her, giving her a gentle, sisterly kiss of affection, and shook her head. "I will not darken myself with anger and pain, lovely Thana. We are each given only a few spans of time to find our heart's ease. I will not poison Liara's one day of grace and love with political maneuvering and hateful words."

A note of steel entered the beautiful asari's voice. "Nor will I stand aside and let others suffer when I can stop it, any more than I would let the humans continue to suffer at turian claws. I have held my tongue on the evil we have let the quarians suffer, and the krogan, and the drell – I can only close my eyes so many times to that which brings only pain before wishing to say 'no more'".

Thana slumped, turning away. "You are a better follower of Athame than I, then."

Uressa's blue eyes sought out the face of the Goddess, before shrugging. "I miss Ynnal T'Vaan. We are unbalanced without her wisdom. She warned us years ago Benezia was … off, and we did not listen."

Uressa turned to leave, trailing fingers along Thana's arm before breaking contact. As she walked into the dark shadows of the Temple, Thana was left all alone, silhouetted by the shifting luminance of the Temple, lost in thought.

O-ATTWN-O

Tali coughed weakly. She felt as if someone had struck her in the head with a mallet, even though she knew that was just her system compensating for her taking off her suit a few hours earlier. The office she sat in felt stuffy and tight, and every once in a while she felt nauseated, although thankfully she hadn't yet vomited.

She was really hoping that wouldn't happen.

She sighed, trying to concentrate on the manual on the desk in her office, before her vision blurred and swam and she coughed again. Pushing the book away in disgust, she triggered yet another dose of anti-nausea drugs and sat back, trying to get her head to stop spinning.

The past few hours had been a blurred mess of emotions and reactions. Taking Kiala's advice to heart, she'd decided she needed to get used to the idea of not being in the suit, in a safe clean environment, before she could do anything else. According to Kiala, just doing so would make her feel sick, since the suit isolated her body for so long that even the low-level pathogens found in a sterilized clean room would affect her. Getting used to such low-level pathogens was the very first step she had to overcome.

She'd decided to hold off on taking off her suit and dealing with the shock of that until after they had dealt with Ahern's final test, and she was very glad she'd been smart enough to do that. Fighting that bosh'tet while dizzy and sick would have ended badly. After she'd recovered from her minor injuries, she'd decided to do it Saturday night, since the crew would be occupied in their parties celebrating the end of the First Contact War.

The clean room Shepard had authorized for her was a conversion of one of the escape pod launch cradles. Walls had been extended around the external bulkhead of the corridor, forming a primary airlock with a series of sterilization routines. An inner airlock door lead to where the escape pod would normally be, which had been removed and walls installed to form two fairly large rooms, the first about ten feet by eight feet, the second much smaller. The second room contained the equipment and DETA filtration systems that kept the inner clean room sterile at all times.

The floor, ceiling and bulkheads were all spray-coated with a thin layer of reactive foam, which bonded to the surfaces and formed a thin, impermeable barrier hostile to microbial life. The air in the room was cycled through the second room, UV sterilized, then passed through six layers of DETA filtration before coming back in. The room itself had a single locker in one corner, a low slung locker along the far wall labeled 'MED', a single table on the wall nearest the door. A comm panel sat next to a full length mirror on the same wall.

And much to Tali's embarrassment, a plastic-sheeted bed was set to the left side of the room.

She'd been mortified to see that, wondering what Shepard thought she wanted a clean room for exactly (even if, to be honest with herself, that's _exactly _what she wanted it for … eventually.) A conversation with Doctor Sedanya had calmed her down, though.

"The medical facilities in the main medbay are simply not good enough for you if you're seriously hurt. There's no positive air filtration, and while the diagnostic and disinfection routines are good, they're adapted for humans, not quarians. Since we're setting up a clean room anyway, we decided it was best to set up a medical trauma section just for you and keep you isolated from other pathogens."

True to her word, the under-section of the bed had shelving containing medical equipment and a spare medical envirosuit. There were hooks and mountings on the wall for medical sensors and equipment, the low locker along the far wall full of scanners and monitoring equipment she didn't understand.

Taking off her suit had been something very difficult for her to do. On the Normandy, she'd only had to do so once, using the airlock after heavy sterilization cycles to move from her old Flotilla-issued suit to the new suit Shepard had commissioned for her. The heavier materials and higher quality of the Colossus suit, along with its extra features, had become comfortable over the months she'd worn it, along with all the customization she'd done to it.

Taking her old suit off in the airlock had been nerve-wracking, but she'd done it knowing she would be putting on a new suit immediately.

She'd been without a suit twice more in her hospital stays, but that was different, as they put her in isolation units and she'd had on a body-suit in any case. Along with the heavy and sterile plastic sheeting, and the bulky envirosuits of the quarian medics, she'd felt exposed but not naked.

This time, Kiala said she should stay naked for at least three hours, to get used to the idea of being out of the suits. On the Flotilla, clean rooms were only let out for couples engaging in intercourse, and only for an hour at the most. Given the expense of sterilization equipment and filters, they had to be frugal in their use.

The idea of having her own personal clean room to use whenever, and for as long as she liked, was certainly entrancing. But getting used to actually using it was daunting. Still, she knew she had to get used to it, so she'd taken her suit off. She'd cringed as she'd removed each piece this time, being careful to lay them out on the table in the order she took them off in.

Seeing her pale skin had not been as shocking as she had expected, and she figured she'd gotten used to it in the hospital. The first hour she had the suit off she'd crawled into the bed, pulling the thick plastic sheeting up to her chin, oddly cold and vulnerable feeling. She'd actually dozed off, and woken up coughing and feeling dizzy an hour later. She'd spent another hour with the suit off before sterilizing it and herself and putting it back on,

Now she was back at work, or at least trying to work, and was wracked with coughing, nausea, spasms and the occasional blurred vision.

It wasn't as bad as she'd feared, but it was still worse than she'd felt after Noveria.

Kiala had explained that she would always feel a little sick after taking off her suit. In an environment without any dextro-compatible germs, like the Kazan, the risk was that levo-compatible bacteria would try to set up shop in her body, and while they would eventually die out, the incompatible waste products they produced would cause allergic reactions. Eventually she would get used to it, though.

That had gotten her to thinking why more quarians in the Flotilla didn't slowly try to wean themselves off their suits. Outcasts, sadly, had no choices but to try, given their surroundings were constantly bathed in germs and foreign substances. Many of them sickened and died, but many more survived. They still needed the suit to avoid being completely overwhelmed, but at least a few quarians could keep the suit off for hours with little ill effect.

Her unwitting discovery of quarian porn on the extranet when looking for knowledge on human-quarian intersexuality had put paid to the idea that a quarian had to stay locked up in the suit for their entire life or die. Clearly, that wasn't always the case.

She knew the answer, of course – keeping the suits on all the time minimized the need for medicines, ensured survival from pressure or atmospheric failure, and cut down on incidental injuries. But at the same time, some quarians had died from even a single suit breach. Not trying to work towards adapting to the reality of life was going to hurt the quarian people in the long run.

The outcasts were the only experts on the best ways to survive and even grow stronger from such things, and Tali knew she was probably the only one bothering to listen to one. She was careful to compile everything Kiala taught her about out-of-suit survival – she planned to introduce such knowledge back to the Flotilla whenever she got around to returning.

Talking with her had grown easier. Despite her bitchy personality and bitterness, Tali was surprised to find that Kiala was actually rather kind and sweet. She had been hurt badly by the exile from her people, and hurt worse when her sacrifices were proven to be needless, but Tali was as careful and polite as possible to not offend her.

Kiala had a very dry and wicked wit, an absolutely filthy mouth, and a delight in every part of human culture. She was constantly comparing certain things the Flotilla did that made no sense to human culture, which was much more relaxed. The quarian fixation on loyalty to the Flotilla and the survival of the Flotilla above everything else had resulted, in Kiala's opinion, in most of quarian arts and culture dying off. Rather than actively look for solutions or answers, the Flotilla had slowly begun to decay, and she blamed the nature of the quarian outlook on survival for that.

Tali had held her tongue during these diatribes, and was slowly reevaluating much of what she'd assumed was merely fact. The humans were _not _stupid, and the more she looked over what they did, the more convinced she was there had to be reasons behind it. The more she understood about humans, the better she would be able to understand and help Jeff … and the more likely she could figure out how to convince him that he was better off with the quarian people – no matter their flaws – than his own.

That was why she was trying to dig through the manual, ultimately. And if a small part of her fevered mind was amused at the fact she was having to translate a thickly written technical document for insights into an alien culture for the sake of eventually getting laid, she refused to humor it.

Unfortunately, unlike quarian tech manuals, which tended to explain why things were done and the steps taken to avoid issues, human manuals were dry and dreadfully unhelpful when it came to explanations.

Since that didn't work, she got up a bit unsteadily to walk into Engineering proper, seeking out the Assistant Engineer. The human was performing preventative maintenance checks on the air-filters, glancing up when she approached. "Oya irie, rasyai. Yer done filling yer face with th' manual? Blasted thing is as useful as vorcha in th' engine room."

She titled her head, still getting used to the heavy Arcturus accent, with all its slang words. "I thought I was mumu."

He snorted. "Slang for quarian. Yer dem a me friend now, of sorts, so it be good to address ye with th' proper respect-like, seen? Rasyai be meanin' boss lady."

She laughed, shaking her head. "If you say so, Mr. Patrick. I had some more questions about the SA's practices in terms of all these backup systems. And the manual, as you pointed out, isn't very useful."

The burly engineer nodded, finishing his checklist and tucking away his pad. "Aye, figgerin' you would. Mumus prolly build a mite different than the Alliance, renk to yas, fullness to us. If ye had no questions, I'd be thinking you were lagga. What ye be wondering'?"

She folded her hands together. "The Normandy didn't have a great deal of backups, or so many extra subsystems. Quarian ships certainly don't, and I'm not understanding why there is so much focus on this. Also, your power systems are routed very strangely. And the asari black boxes are driving me insane!"

She huffed, and the older human laughed quietly. "Ah, truly dread, the quarian puttin' the screw to th' Alliance method. Fetch yerself a sitdown, lass."

She sat down on one of the watch-standing chairs overlooking the power board for the Core, and he stood in front of her, folding his arms and rubbing his squared-off chin. "Th' Alliance waren't never no brilliant engineers, rasyai. We came outta the Days o' Iron with bare upon half our smarties dead and gone, an' th' other half up to jus' tryin' to keep the damn lights going. Took years and years for their even t'be a proper Alliance Engineerin' group."

He gestured around. "Since so much of what we did back then was half-ass and shite, we had to make sure if one thing went clotted, the rest would be straight, seen? So ye have backups ta backups, emergency gear and repair gear and all of that roundabout." He frowned. "It has come in handy, too, the damned spikes had a hard time puttin' our ships down in the Clusterfuck War."

She burst out laughing at this term for the FCW, and he gave her a sour grin. "Nowadays, th' backups are part n'parcel of the culture."

She nodded. "But they are … well, wasteful, aren't they? Quarian ships don't use them, and the Normandy didn't have any." A series of coughs racked her slim body, and when she recovered, she made a gesture. "Sorry."

He gave her a concerned look. "Ye seen the doc? That is sounding right bumbaclot."

She puzzled over the last word before shrugging. "I have, but I'll be okay. Um...where were we. Oh, I was saying that the Normandy didn't have any backups..."

He snorted. "Shite, and how well did that turn out for ye? Adams about wore out me ear with all the sheg-up and problems ye had when ye took the littlest pinch o' damage. Sides, the damned spikes fouled up the Normandy somethin' proper, with all that overpowered shielding and not enough armor to stop a good spitball. No god-fearing sailor would go into the Long Dark on that coffin without a heap o' prayers."

She watched him as he made another gesture to the Core. "As for wasteful, aye, I'll be about it and say you're right as rain. From an energy curve standpoint, we're not gonna be strong pound for pound as a turian or asari ship. But we can soak twice th' damage afore we lose everything. I figure yon quarian types can't be affording anything that doesn't get the most bang for yer buck. Whatcha callit, minimalist."

She nodded, and he snorted. "Fancy-arse word for shoestring budget, amorelike. Yer ships get a serious problem and what do ye do? Fix it on the spot?"

She frowned, then nodded again more slowly. "Yes..for the most part, as long as we have the parts to do so. Most quarians are heavily cross-trained in engineering – we all have to be."

Casey Patrick nodded. "Well, humans ain't. Most of us are not a jot of good in the engineering ways, and we focus people on th' tasks at hand. Ye can't be applying the same solution to different problems. Same with th' power systems. Power management is something yer people are probably wild-on about, but on an Alliance ship, plenty o' power to spare."

She couldn't argue that. "Why so much extra power, when it could be made more efficient?" She coughed again, grimacing as a bubble of nausea made her vision swim, but listened as carefully as she could to the answer.

He scowled. "That pack o' black devils and stooshies we call BuShips, rasyai. Our weapons an' shielding aren't as good as the spikes, an' the stupid idjit answer ta that is more power." He rolled his eyes, waving a hand towards the Core. "All th' extra power goes inta the weapons, powers the sensors somethin' fierce, and gives us enough leeway to be sloppy."

Tali nodded. She wouldn't miss the delicate and crazed dance of power balances the Normandy had required, but it still seemed … sloppy, as he put it. On the other hand, having extra power was never really a bad thing, as long as it wasn't just poor isolation. "And the black boxes?"

Patrick smiled. "Och, I ain't ta be touching that talkabout. But I'll say that th' Alliance is more concerned with makin' things work than how they work. A lot o' engineers ain't all jooks about the situation, but … outta our hands, seen?"

Tali sighed and nodded. "What..." She paused, then folded her arms. "What am I missing or not seeing? What do I need to learn to be a good human engineer?"

Patrick took a deep breath. "Lemme put it so. Yer value is that yer _not _human, rasyai. Ye see things and look on the works with a different eye than me and mine do. For now all ye need to focus on is getting' familiar with all the equipment and the power curves. All the fancy-dancy bits can come as ye move on and along, seen?"

He frowned as his omni chirruped, read the message, and scowled. "Daft idjits. Some fool blew out th' number six power converter tryin' to hotcharge the GARDIAN array for some test." He glanced in her direction. "Are ye feeling up to some repairin', or is your coughing tellin' ye to rest?"

She snorted. "I'll be fine, Mr. Patrick. Let's get some work done."

* * *

_Second A/N: A PRIMER ON ARCUTURIAN PATOIS_

_The settlers of Arcuturus were drawn heavily from evacuees from Jamaica and Scotland, as those islands were not salvageable in the changes during the Days of Iron. The community has been heavily intermixed since then, but the accent is still primarily Scottish and liberally sprinkled with Jamaican patois. _

_Oya irie : greetings  
_

_mumu: literally bucket, slang term for quarians  
_

_Renk to yas, fullness to us: to be offensive (rank) to others, but to be proper (full of grace) to one's own group. Commonly used as a saying to denote differences in method_

_lagga: laggard, slow, dumb_

_smarties: scientists, engineers, anyone highly educated_

_clotted: a complex word , and evolved to mostly mean something akin to a bloody mess, or more properly, its aftermath._

_sheg-up: a low slang word for a confused process _

_stooshies: rich and incompetent idiots _

_talkabout: a complex subject, with an overtone of distaste. _

_jooks: jokes, to be happy about something._

_Seen: a ritualistic phrase roughly asking if you understand what they mean_


	15. Chapter 15 : Mirrors and Motivations

_**A/N:** This is a monstrously big chapter, because I couldn't really justify breaking it in half.  
_

_The nature of the changes in Shepard is something that I gave a great deal of thought to. I'm very interested in people's thoughts on this chapter, as (again) it's moving in a direction against the advice of others. Given that I was having blocks with every other approach, though, I figure sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and keep the story moving. I'm still working on the next chapter, with no clear ETA yet._

_This is also the last of Admiral Ahern for a while, although I will get some work on on Lions here sooner or later to tide his fans over. _

_As always, if you have questions about some of what is referenced here, leave a review or PM and I will answer as fast as I can. :)_

_EDITED: to placate Liethr (my beta) and 5 Coloured Walker (before I kill him or her with ... spaces abuse. Yes, that one was deliberate.)_

* * *

__'What is this shit? Why does **anything** think I can be killed?'  
__

__ – Admiral Tradius Ahern, quoted at the Second Battle of Sol (ground) after taking out an entire pack of Brutes  
__

* * *

Shepard arrived in Ahern's offices on Monday morning, dressed in uniform rather than armor for the first time in weeks. As usual, the admiral was seated at his elevated desk, looking a little drawn but otherwise normal, apparently finishing a vid-call of some kind. His eyes speared her as she entered, a strange look in them. He made a brusque gesture towards the corner of his office.

"Shepard. Sit the fuck down over there on the couch. Be there in a minute." He turned back to the vidscreen.

"And you! I don't give a fuck what the bitch-ass horn-headed prick says, load the fucking file just as instructed! We'll be down sooner or later, and if it isn't ready to go someone's going to need a goddamned proctologist when I get through with them."

He clicked off and stood, straightening his uniform as he came down the steps. "You know what I like about you, Shepard? When I tell you to do something, you don't give me nine reasons why you can't, you just do it. If more people had your goddamned attitude we wouldn't need to hide behind asari skirts so much."

He drew to a stop in front of her, then sat down on the opposite couch, wincing as he did so. "You may recall that when you first showed up here in all your glorious shitfuckery, I mentioned a wager. A little something I've been offering the past couple of years, as a way to further humiliate you idiots who come for training and as a way to entertain myself."

She nodded, remembering the conversation. "Yes, sir. I do remember that."

Ahern leaned back on the couch, eying her curiously. "The wager itself is not really that important, at least to me. By this point, the wager is more of a joke than anything else. I do it because it makes people pay attention when they have something to win or lose. We'll get down to the details on the wager in a minute, but first, I want you to think about something."

The admiral placed his hands together. "What do you think is the most important thing you've learned while you are here? Think carefully before you open your damned mouth."

Shepard nodded, and leaned back a bit. She reviewed everything they'd gone over – conditioning, how to fight, weapons and martial arts styles, technical considerations, ground and space tactics, positioning, the political crap...

_What could be the most important out of all of that?_

She racked her brains for several seconds before giving a disgusted sigh. "I don't know, sir."

Ahern gave a narrow smile. "Good. Most officers give me some kind of bullshit answer when I ask them that, trying to say something to make themselves look smart. When you don't know, say you don't know."

He paused. "A soldier has a lot of different weapons. Some are his guns, or his mind, or his heart and guts. Others are what he fights for, or his skills at doing it. Still other weapons would be shit like biotics, or their natural abilities and body. All of these are fucking _things, _Shepard. Things are useless unless you know how to use them."

He sneered. "I repeatedly hammer in the point that relying on any one thing is bad. And yet, every time I ask that question and some idiot gives me one thing they think is important and it's some bullshit answer like 'the mind', I want to fucking slap them. Because the whole reason I train them – and trained you – on so many different aspects is that they are _all_ important. Otherwise I wouldn't have wasted my goddamned time!"

Ahern's expression slid into a distasteful sneer. "The most important fucking weapon, and the one people always forget about, is their _training. _You can't use the goddamned guns, or fancy ass martial arts, or tactics or biotics or any fucking thing else without training. Training is what separates elites from green troops, badasses from jackasses, and living warriors from dead bastards."

"Being able to recognize and know how to react to a situation is more valuable than guns, or how smart you are, or how brave you are. Having a tactical option and alternatives in a situation keeps you alive better than any armor. I've seen plenty of brave, smart motherfuckers. They're all fucking dead. Because they hit a target they had no training for and made a bad judgment call."

He paused, then leaned forward.

"No matter what anyone says, you're a good soldier, Shepard. Your training was weak, but your instincts were spot on. People who have never been in your trenches can't cast judgment on your calls. All the training in the world won't make a good soldier out of a bad one. It will help a good soldier stay alive."

He folded his arms. "If you take anything away from Pinnacle, remember two things. First, remember the basic mantra – over-reliance on _anything_ is bad. Combining the tools you have will give you a bigger edge than doing the same shit over and over. While I'm sure you think you have learned a lot, all I've done is reinforce your basics, wean you off of relying on your biotics for everything, and show you the ropes."

She bit her lip. "Yes, sir." She sighed. "I don't understand why no one ever did that before now. It wouldn't have taken long if you could get it done in a month."

Ahern sighed. "That's a discussion that I have, I fucking assure you, already had with a great number of people. The best answer I can give you is that everyone but Tradius Ahern is a goddamned idiot."

She looked at him, and after a moment couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Ahern shook his head. "I so wish it was a fucking joke, Shepard, but I'm serious. People see the shit you've done and instead of seeing the men it cost you to get it done, or how torn up and hurt you get pulling it off, only see the results. They tell themselves that old mantra of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and they don't see what I see. And most of all, most people don't understand _why _relying on the same shit repeatedly is bad. If you fail to perceive a problem, then it becomes hard to fix it."

"There are, I suppose, reasons for the way others have acted or failed to act. They may not be reasons I agree with – or even fucking _understand_ – but they have their reasons. What others did or didn't do is hopefully an awkward conversation that you can have with them. Thankfully, you and I will not have that kind of conversation, because I did not ignore what the fuck I saw, I fixed it instead."

He looked at her. "But keep I mind that is all I did. _Fix_ what you already had."

He leveled a finger at her. "Nothing I taught you was some super-secret training, Shepard. It was the basics, touched up with a bit of specialization here and there. The only problems you had were that you were sloppy with no real focus on defense, with too much focus on mindlessly closing range and too much reliance on your biotics to make up for your shortfalls elsewhere."

Shepard frowned. "But you … pretty much tore every piece of it apart, sir."

Ahern smiled coolly. "Did I? I've trained a lot of fucking people. I trained Dragunov, and that man was the most complete fighter I've ever seen in my life. And still I had to teach HIM a lot of the same shit I did with you. I end up having to repeat the basics over and over again, to him and to everyone else. It isn't because I'm somehow smarter than everyone else – although everyone else is a goddamned idiot..."

He muttered something under his breath, and then continued. "And it certainly isn't because I never made mistakes _myself_. I was almost taken out more than once through my own stupidity, and the most humiliating ass whipping I ever got was from a severely hacked off hanar that I was stupid enough to try to fight underwater."

She blinked at that, but he continued. "I have to teach the basics because each and every one of us has our strengths and weaknesses. Circumstance makes you stick to what works, but it also moves you away from remembering the simple shit." He paused. "In fact, a lot of the dumb shit you were pulling, such as not wearing a fucking helmet, can be chalked up to sticking to what works – in your case, biotics."

He stood. "The core of what makes you unstoppable is your biotic power. I focused on tearing your style apart because there is a difference in using it and _relying_ on it. Do not think your style is useless, Shepard. You had to teach yourself. You built something on your own, and despite what you think, I haven't done anything special except give you the basics and the skills to smooth it out."

She frowned. "But..." She paused, thinking, suddenly feeling torn between a small sense of warm pride and confusion. "So it wasn't all horrible? Then why – "

He shook his head. "Why the beat-down? Assumptions, mostly. I thought you were like most of the other biotics I've trained, full of their own bullshit and convinced a non-biotic couldn't teach them a thing. And I said it wasn't useless, not that it wasn't flawed. Before I trained you, your reliance on your biotics – everything, from firing off oversized weapons to even maintaining your balance – was crippling you."

He gave her a hard look. "One day, that would have gotten you killed. Biotics are goddamned terrifying, and the first thing an enemy will do if they can is nullify them. You saw yourself how fucking useless you were – you couldn't snipe, you lugged around weapons that without them you couldn't have fired, you even used them to compensate for not knowing proper cover tactics. With what I've added to your arsenal, you can shape what you already know into something devastating. If you were good with only half-ass training, you'll be that much better now."

He checked something on his omni-tool, then nodded. "In short, Shepard, what I did was give you some grounding. It is up to you to figure out how to improve the style you built for yourself. The other half of what I've taught you – I hope – is how to react to situations. That will be the difference between life and death when luck inevitably turns to show you its ass."

He gestured for her to stand, and he walked out of the office towards the lifts. "The second thing I want you to take away from this will be demonstrated shortly. We've got to head down to the special virtual training areas for that. While we walk, I will explain the wager."

He opened the lift and got in, and she followed. He punched a control and turned to face her. "I've been stuck out here in the ass end of nowhere for years, but even before shit went to hell with Saren and all that, my tour of duty here at Pinnacle was about up. That's what started the wager. In about a year I was finally slated to transfer to Arcturus and start drawing up the plans for the backbone of what would eventually be, by 2190, the Sixth Fleet."

"Originally, my wife and I intended to settle here on Intei'sai. I find it to be a pretty planet, people leave you the hell alone, and we got a good deal on this oversized place in the northern hills. Some asari had built it with her human bondmate, but then the guy died or some shit. Didn't care, it was a good deal."

He smiled, features softening. "I had some good years here. It's a good place to live."

He sighed. "Then about four years ago, my wife became ill with a transitive genetic disorder. Controllable with the proper care, but the only hospitals with the equipment to really handle it are on Earth or on the Citadel. I will be dipped in napalm and used to light candles on a batarian birthday cake before I ever go back to that fucking shithole Earth, so we bought a place on the Wards and put our home here up for sale. The original plan was to move her there and visit when I could, which I wasn't wild about but it was better than the alternative."

He folded his arms, grunting. "The problem moving is that I had to get rid of the house, and there were no buyers. I never liked it much myself, even if she did, and it doesn't surprise me most people on the planet aren't interested. Don't take this the wrong way, but asari architecture is fucking creepy. When the goddamned bathroom reminds you of a vagina..."

Shepard stared at him for a long second before bursting into laughter.

Ahern grinned himself. "About the same time as I started wanting to sell the house, I had a bit of an issue with a training program I run, and I decided that it would be easier to give the fucking thing away than sell it. As it turned out, I made a half-drunken bet with someone, wagering my house that they couldn't get through Dalthos and sure as shit, they couldn't."

His grin faded a bit. "Thus, the wager. Each person I train for command usually has a skill or item they can put up to bet. I bet my house here on Intei'sai. Worth a good five hundred grand, empty, and it comes with just about everything you could need. I might be able to sell it if I came down on the price, but frankly, if I'm going to take a loss on the thing, I might as well get something out of it. By this point, the wagers I've won have paid for it twice over."

He gave a disgusted sigh. "However, things have changed now, due to the Benezia Incident. Whoever the fuck was in charge of Second Fleet at Arcturus got his goddamned dreadnaught blown to shit, and they had to hose the stupid bastard out of his own bridge. Since Hackett made a hero out of himself saving the Council's ass, they're giving him Second Fleet, and they're finally promoting me to Fleet Admiral."

She nodded. "Congratulations, sir."

He snorted. "It's better than piloting a desk. And the reason I'm happy about it the move is that the whole Fifth Fleet thing works out much better – with the promotion coming up, I'll be stationed there and she can get the care she needs. But it puts me in a pickle, because now I have to get rid of the house soonest. With the transfer imminent, I've changed things up a bit. Instead of the usual wager, which is usually a full simulation of several very hard fights I've been in or seen, I've tweaked this one a bit to at least make it half-ass possible to win and to help solve the problems I'm having with our latest project. Are you interested in a house?"

She nodded, thinking.

_A house. A real house, not some shitty arcology tower layout or even an apartment, but a house. _

_A house meant a home. Family. A place to stand. _

She gave a tiny little smile and nodded. "Okay. Let's say I go for trying to get this house of yours. What am I putting up in return?"

Ahern smiled. "In this case, I want you, if you lose, to build me a fully functional ODIN shotgun, but in a full automatic fire version. I want a triple heatsink that I can rotate through in a drum when the damned thing overheats. I want it to incorporate a fluid-recoil adjustment and be able to link to targeting software built into my helmet, and I want a fucking omni-bayonet on the end of the thing. You pay for all the materials."

Shepard arched her eyebrow. "The version I use is illegal without the permit. Full auto is actually something the ODIN can do, but I didn't include that in the plans...a drum will raise all kinds of eyebrows. And a bayonet? Do you have any fucking idea what an ODIN does to people at close range? That's like sticking a flamethrower on a dreadnaught."

Ahern just gave her a look. "I'm a gun collector, and I'm also a vicious bastard. Humor me. I promise not to shoot anyone with it ...at least anytime soon. Anyway, the wager is based on you being able to complete one final task – and learn one final lesson."

The lift stopped, opening out onto a long armored corridor. Lighting was from recessed lights in the ceiling, while the walls were heavy armor plated bulkheads with white stencils reading "RESTRICTED ACCESS" on them. Ahern took the lead, walking past several armored doors until he came to one that read 'VIRTUAL ARENA COMMAND' and entering.

The room beyond was wide, a series of consoles manned by a handful of operators in BDU's, with a wide armaglass portal looking out onto a much larger space beyond, one crisscrossed with orange lines and studded with strange looking machines. Large computer banks bulked against two of the walls, and the ceiling had multiple haptic status screens and monitors mounted on it. She glanced around and frowned. "What is this place?"

Ahern smiled coolly. "This is the Simulations Room. A project the Alliance has been working on for about ten years. We originally started it as a VR training simulation, and as time has gone by we've updated it. We upgraded it when we took on a project for the Council, to create a training simulator for the SPECTRE program."

He walked further inside, and she followed. "There's a powerful set of multiprocessors here, running the most powerful and adaptive VI that humanity can make. It has been tested extensively on Luna, and although there were some … issues at one point, we have the bugs worked out."

Reaching the windows, he gestured to the vast room beyond. "The program generates holographic terrain, using holo-field technology, and simulates solid objects and effects using mass-effect generation equipment like that used in the Armax Arena. It loads up combat footage and data, along with carefully programmed baselines of military equipment, info-war techniques, and biotic power descriptions."

Shepard nodded, noting the pride in his voice and how his cursing had stopped. "And does what, exactly?"

Ahern walked over to a console by the window and tapped in some commands. The room beyond shimmered and turned into a white box, and in the center of it stood a generic Alliance Marine, in Onyx armor and wearing a helmet, loosely holding an Avenger rifle. "Generate a nearly perfect copy of any soldier or subject we have data on. Combined with the data from combat styles, video footage, and the like, we can recreate entire battles, skirmishes, or combats."

Ahern turned to face her. "The SPECTREs use it to practice fighting dangerous enemies or to sharpen their skills, whereas the Alliance uses it to simulate full out combat in zero-G or alien environments for A-rate training. Both types of simulations are very useful, of course – but the real goal is building better combat VI for our use in mechs. The VI learns, models behavior and combat tactics, and eventually will form the core of an entirely VI-driven infantry that will balance our lack of numbers."

She shrugged. "If you ask me, it sorta sounds like the geth."

Ahern nodded. "Which is why the VI is so carefully handicapped. Ours won't ever get out of control because there are physical interlocks preventing it from leaving this system, and it never has access to any hardware platforms. The quarians were stupid, they let millions of VI's link together and gave them physical forms from the outset. I don't know what they fucking thought would happen, but only a completely shitbrained idiot would think that design was safe."

He gestured to the banks of computers. "Ours is a singular unit that has to split its attention between the platforms it runs. It isn't anywhere nearly as advanced or reactive as the geth, but that's alright. It will be years before this VI is combat ready for the field, and at every step we have Council-approved programmers overseeing the process."

He folded his arms. "The problem we're running into – and why I'm using it for the nature of our bet – is simple. Namely, the damned machine is too good at mimicking what it fights. When we take off all the limiters and let the thing go full out, no one has managed to beat it when we load up the scenario I'm trying to get to work. And since the whole point of the scenario is to let people find how to beat themselves to find weaknesses, we're pulling our hair out."

She scratched her heed. "What's the scenario?"

He glanced at her. "Let me demonstrate."

He tapped controls on the panel and the room beyond shifted. Now it was an over-sized concrete field, bounded by flat gray walls with the SA logo on them, perhaps two hundred feet to a side.

In the middle of this box was a single female human in black Spectre armor, sans helmet, holding an ODIN.

Shepard swallowed as she stared at the VI recreation of herself, taking in the flat expression, before turning to Ahern. "Sir?"

Ahern smiled faintly. "The simulation is what we call a 'mirror match'. Stole the idea from Armax, actually, but theirs isn't that impressive. The goal was to be able to highlight weaknesses and let someone model their own combat prowess. Now, common sense tells us that a VI isn't as good as the real thing, but so far no one has been able to beat their mirror match-up. Not N7s, not SPECTREs, and not even me."

He tapped a control, and a second Shepard appeared. This one was also clad in Spectre armor, but white instead of black, clutching an ODIN as well. Shepard couldn't make out the expression on this one, as it had a helmet on.

"This second VI is one I had made of you, based on the training we've been doing. I want you to observe something. Call it the final lesson. A hard demonstration of just the fuck why I had to train you so hard."

He tapped several more controls, and the room shifted a third-time, to some random, war-torn field. Bits of debris and half-wrecked buildings formed cover, while dark and ugly clouds skidded across the false sky. The two Shepards stood far apart now, about five hundred feet separating them.

Ahern pulled down two haptic screens to his left, one focused on the black-armored Shepard, the other one the one in white armor. "I call them Old Shepard and New Shepard. I want you to watch very closely what happens when I pit them against each other."

He tapped a control, and the two figures moved. New Shepard immediately shipped her ODIN, tucking in cover, while old Shepard pulled out her Revenant and begin closing range, firing in the rough direction of New Shepard.

She knew what Old Shepard was doing, suppressive fire while she got close enough for a kanquess. But watching the figure now, the tactic seemed so flat, so clumsy … so stupid. She wasn't even ducking into cover, just charging ahead firing, and the blasts from the Revenant weren't anywhere close to New Shepard.

New Shepard calmly sighted in with a sniper rifle and fired, the first shot taking Old Shepard in the knee and shredding the barrier with the flare of a disruptor round. The second shot struck the charging form of Old Shepard just above the right eye, blowing most of the VI simulations head off in a shockingly gory spray of virtual blood.

Shepard swallowed. Ahern grimaced. "I've run this over fifty times at ranges greater than three hundred feet, and the VI reacts the same way every fucking time. Would you say that's an accurate representation of what you would have done?"

Shepard bit her lip, wondering that herself. She realized that she had, before her training, a bad tendency to only take cover when already under heavy incoming fire. Batarians didn't use many snipers, and now that she thought about it, every time she'd been jacked up back in her RRU and RIU days had been due to sniper fire.

Over the years she'd simply learned to adapt, getting closer before beginning her attack, or dictating the fight to a range where she could kanquess from. With a disgusted sigh she nodded. "Pretty much. Seems fucking stupid now."

Ahern chuckled. "Yeah, it does. Let's show you one hundred feet." He tapped controls, the scene shifting slightly, the two combatants much closer together now.

Once again, Old Shepard began heavy fire with the Revenant, but this time it was much more accurate, and New Shepard reacted. She biotically charged from cover to cover, never letting Old Shepard close on her, while counter-firing with the Valkyrie assault rifle he'd replaced her Revenant with. She alternated this fire with various explosive grenades. This barrage chipped away at the Old Shepard's barrier field until it flickered, showing it was growing weak.

Eventually New Shepard stopped retreating, and Old Shepard swapped to the ODIN and biotically charged. New Shepard dropped back with her own charge, flinging an anti-biotic grenade along with a smoke grenade at her feet, then fell back as Old Shepard charged once more. The two grenades went off at once, and New Shepard opened up full auto, spraying the cloud of smoke.

Old Shepard, disoriented from the loss of biotics and the smoke, stumbled out, and New Shepard charged her, slamming into her violently with a Nova, a moment later driving her omnitool into Old Shepard's face along with biotic power that drove the glowing spike completely through Old Shepard's head.

She winced. Ahern shrugged. "This one's a bit more reactive. Still, nine times out of ten, Old Shepard gets her ass handed to her. The only time she wins it is if she bothers with using her other biotics. Let's change up some parameters, though, just so you can see. We'll remove the use of anti-biotic grenades."

This time, the range was the same, but Old Shepard pulled out her Thunderbolt sniper rifle, actually ducking into cover and firing off ranging shots. New Shepard triggered her omnishield, and used her biotic charge laterally, moving into better cover, while dropping a pair of tech-mines.

She drew back further, into the rubble of a building, and Old Shepard shipped her sniper rifle, pulling out her ODIN. Once again, Old Shepard charged, this time triggering the tech-mines, blowing her off her feet. New Shepard flashed out in her own kanquess, discharging her Sunfire pistol at pointblank range into Old Shepard three times before dropping a grenade and flashing away.

Already nearly dead, Old Shepard gamely managed to jump back from the grenade, but her ODIN was ruined and she drew her Revenant instead. Falling back limping, she fired long bursts of fire, most of which got close to New Shepard, but none connecting.

New Shepard calmly pulled out her sniper rifle, putting shots into Old Shepard's shoulder and knee, chipping away at Old Shepard's weakened barrier. Old Shepard finally ducked into cover, and as soon as she did so New Shepard charged.

Old Shepard hit her with a burst from the Revenant, shredding New Shepard's shields, but the New Shepard VI flung out two of her omni-goop grenades, locking Old Shepard in place. New Shepard made another kanquess, but had angled the charge upwards, so that she came out high above her enemy.

The real Shepard blinked. She'd never really thought to do that, and tucked the tactic away for later use.

Falling rapidly, New Shepard's ODIN barked in autofire directly from above the struggling, stuck Old Shepard, pulping her head and torso. New Shepard landed on Old Shepard with a thud, breaking her fall and covering the dying Old Shepard with her ODIN.

Ahern sighed. "Now, I know you used to work best at close range. So..." He tapped more controls, and this time the two figures were less than twenty feet apart.

Both Old and New Shepards immediately flew into charges, but Old Shepard charged at her enemy while New Shepard charged _behind _Old Shepard. Lighting fast, New Shepard flung a smear at Old Shepard, wrecking her omnitool and damaging her armor.

Old Shepard struggled to turn, and New Shepard fired with her ODIN, hitting her in the leg. As Old Shepard skidded back, New Shepard leapt into a kanquess, coming out of it with a biotic kick that knocked Old Shepard's ODIN out of her hands.

Old Shepard tried for a counter attack, lashing out into a kick of her own, ducking under a blast from New Shepard's ODIN. With a pull Old Shepard jerked her clone's weapon into her own hands and fired, blasting New Shepard to the ground bleeding. A second shotgun blast to the head finished New Shepard off.

Ahern smirked. "At this range, pretty iffy. Let me run it again, and turn off the restriction on anti-biotic grenades." He kicked off the sequence, and once again they both charged. But this time New Shepard charged straight backwards in sequence, dropping an anti-biotic grenade after her third charge.

Old Shepard barreled ahead, and came out of the kanquess to get hit by the blast of the anti-biotic grenade. She staggered back, and New Shepard hit her with a shockwave, slamming her back against a wall. Before Old Shepard could shake off her stun, New Shepard extended her arm, jamming her ODIN into Old Shepard's face and pulling the trigger.

The real Shepard winced again at the gory sight, and Ahern turned to face her fully. "...like I said, iffy. What I can take away from this is simple. At anything over a hundred feet your old methods will get you killed. Closer than that you get a little better, and at CQB range you are about fifty-fifty. That doesn't invalidate your style exactly – but it does make it very dangerous to just rely on your biotics. Anyone using pulse dissipation grenades ruins your whole fucking game, as you just saw."

She nodded, and Ahern folded his arms. "In a way, Shepard, you were very fucking lucky. Saren was far too arrogant to think he'd need something like that, and most of your fights were not long range affairs. The asari never have good anti-biotic attacks, since so much of their own style uses them, and besides they have their own way of disrupting biotics. I guarantee you that if you run into anything harder than pirate scum and slavers, though, you will get an ugly surprise one of these days when it comes to eating an anti-biotic grenade. Turians and salarians throw those goddamned things like candy at Halloween."

She nodded, thinking back over what she had just seen. "So whenever you match them up...is there any situation where the old style wins every time?'

Ahern smiled. "Very close quarters, with no anti-biotic attacks, when the attack is from an oblique angle – sides or rear – and the target is setup for mid-range attack. Or when you have covering long and medium range elements to distract your enemy from your approach. In those cases, the old way you attacked is almost 100% lethal."

He folded his arms. "Problem is, the percentages drop the further out you start. And the 'new Shepard' can do the same thing, except at almost any range."

She nodded. "So...what do I need to do here, exactly? You said you had a setup for me to help you with ..."

He turned back to the control panel. "The problem we're running into, like I said, is that no one can beat their own match. The only deviation I've seen in that is with your two VI's going at each other – very occasionally, the crazy shit the older one pulls off bypasses the fancy tactics of the updated version and splatters it. Most people don't change up their style so radically, and I think the VI is having a hard time integrating the two."

He frowned. "We've run the diagnostics and we're not coming up with a clear reason why the system is acting this way. My salarian programmer thinks the issue is with the program 'cheating' to adapt to moves faster than a real being could react, but we're not seeing that. The only way we can really get good data is by matching up someone against a mirror match and letting it go all out while at the same time preventing it from fully updating its own reactions code as the fight evolves. That isn't … exactly a fully accurate measure of the fight, but it should work."

He smiled, turning to face her. "And that's where you come in. You think you can do it? Beat yourself, your new and improved self?"

She frowned. "Why not match me up against my 'old self'? I mean, if the idea is to see how much I've improved, how will me fighting the 'new' me show anything?"

Ahern sighed. "I see your brain doesn't work any fucking better than before." He gave a sour smile before he folded his arms. "Three reasons. The first is simple: the fuck would that prove? That yes, with proper training you can decimate someone who doesn't have the same level of training you have? Or that when it gets down to very close range that it comes down more to luck than skill?"

She frowned, and he continued. "I'm not here to see if you have _improved_ over your old self, Shepard. For fuck's sake, you proved _that_ when you three girls got past my test. The old you wouldn't have done the thing you did with downloading the data. You'd have tried to have your fucking girlfriend and Zorah cover you while you went for the prize and eaten a goddamned explosion. The point is to see if you've actually mastered what I've been trying to show you, and while you can certainly do that by head-shotting your old form VI at four hundred feet, it doesn't show everything you've had to learn."

He glanced out the window. "Secondly, matching you up against the VI simulation of your old self isn't even a good measure of showing you've improved, just emoish and stupid pat-on-the-back bullshit. Look how far you've come, blah blah blah."

He fixed her with a hard stare. "I'll cover this more later, but the only thing this demonstration needs to show is how much you've changed and can handle a _thinking _opponent with competent tactics. What you were before I fixed your style up is something best left in the past and forgotten, because frankly the further you distance yourself from that the fucking better. We're not doing this to showcase how others were wrong about you, but to showcase what you can do now that training is done."

He pointed a finger at her. "Finally, Shepard, the point of the wager is to give you a goddamned challenge. Unless I start the old VI off at thirty feet, it won't be a challenge. You already know how to counter everything it can pull out and throw at you, just by remembering how I countered _your _bullshit. If nothing else, the point of your training is to make you think, Shepard. To improvise. Every time you've been up against a wall, you've come up with something – and you need to develop that, hone it, practice it. The unpredictable can't be predicted."

She nodded. "And if you can't prepare for it, you can't stop it."

He nodded. "Matching you up against the VI that mirrors you as you are now is the only way to make absolutely fucking sure that you have internalized the shit I've tried to drill into your thick skull. More importantly, you going up against your old self isn't going to give me the data I need to fix the damned thing."

He folded his arms again. "Anything else you need to know before you lose your ass off?"

She thought about it a minute. "How … realistic is this simulation? Because that looked pretty ugly."

Ahern snorted. "With a living being in there, the safeties are on. The VI scores based on what and how it connects with you, but they're just mass effect fields. Your armor will be disabled remotely to simulate how badly you are hurt. Also keep in mind what you are fighting is simply a hologram with more mass effect fields to simulate a solid body. All of its biotics and what not are simulations, which don't match up well with reality. It can 'simulate' a charge by simply recreating the hologram after the jump, and it can do simple pulls and throws, but everything else is 'simulated biotics'."

She nodded. "So, if I can take down my evil twin, I get your house."

Ahern nodded, and glanced around the room. The only other people in the control area were a couple of techs and a salarian fiddling with a computer console more than thirty feet away, but he still lowered his voice. "I figure that since you're getting shacked up, the house will come in handy. Your girlfriend will probably like it since the design is that of a blasted asari house anyway." He smirked. "Did I mention I dabble in making weapons myself, and it has a fully kitted out omnifoundry room?"

She smiled at that, and Ahern smirked. "Of course, you have to actually defeat your doppelganger, and frankly I don't think you have what it takes, with all the goddamned shit I had to beat out of you. So yes, if you win, the house. If you lose, you spend your last week building me the most powerful shotgun in creation."

She rolled her shoulders. "Alright, Admiral. I'll take your bet."

He laughed. "Good, good. Delacor chickened out, and Branson...well. Let's just say he didn't do very well. I'm interested to see if you can do better, or fuck up even more entertainingly."

He turned away, walking over towards the salarian. "Bago, get the arena set up for a level six, full safeties, single unit against single unit. Use the urban combat layout seven, and go to full coordination on the VI, suppress feedback updates."

He gestured to Shepard as he looked at one of the human techs. "Tomas, get the commander here to the equipment room and have her use one of the asari Spectre suits. Code in weapons summary as identical to Shepard 2.0 and set up the pulse dissipation fields to suppress biotics in three meter square blocks on detonation of simulated anti-biotic ordinance."

The human tech, a slender man with dark hair and a single cybernetic eye, nodded, getting up from his console and gesturing for Shepard to follow. As she walked out, Ahern smiled again, and then tapped his comm-link.

"General Collins, Shepard has agreed to the simulation I suggested. This will be your last chance for review before signoff. If you and these other observers want to watch, it will start in about ten minutes."

A thin, reedy voice answered. "Do you think this is really necessary, Admiral? You argued the point that much of her deficiency had been corrected."

Ahern snorted. "You're the ones who implied she wasn't worth the time or effort. And you're the ones who will say yay or nay to the final call on her command. She's attached to Arcturus Command, so she's technically your Marine. I'm just giving you heads up that the shit is happening."

Collins gave a sigh. "We'll be there shortly, Admiral. General Collins out."

Ahern gave a small nod of satisfaction and glanced over to the salarian tech. "Bago, you loaded the program _exactly_ as I told you to, yes?"

The salarian nodded. "Yes. You are aware that there are significant inefficiencies running it in this fashion? It may help us pin down the problem,but it is going to be very hard for her to actually defeat her VI copy if the reactivity is set to full, even if the updates are turned off."

Ahern shrugged. "Meh. You have no faith in my ability to turn dross into gold, Bago. Watch and see."

O-ATTWN-O

Ten minutes later, Shepard stepped out of an armory and into what looked like a re-creation of the desolate shattered streets and buildings of Dirth. Thin wispy clouds moved fretfully across an otherwise clear blue sky, and the ground was hard plastcrete, cracked here and there by battle.

A row of broken colony modules curved into a C-shape around her, broken in the middle by a debris-rimmed crater. More boxy buildings loomed in the background, and up the side of the cliff-face to her right. To her left the buildings were little more than rubble, eventually stopping short of a wide and rushing river.

Without hesitating or waiting, Shepard hustled into cover, making sure her helmet was secure. She kept the quick checklist Ahern had drilled into her head in mind, prepping a single anti-biotic grenade and triggering her omnitool to scan for EM disruptions.

Ahern's voice sounded in the earpiece built into her helmet. "As you can probably tell, this is a mockup of part of Hennson City on Dirth. Your opponent is VI Shepard 2.0. She's identical to you – wearing Spectre armor and the same weapons you have. Your goal is simple; defeat your clone in less than twenty minutes. If you are defeated, knocked unconscious, take longer than twenty minutes, or somehow manage to blow up my arena, you lose. Just to make you feel special, you have observers again."

She nodded to herself, eyes moving, before pulling out her new Manur sniper rifle and easing around the boxy shape of the colony module. She had no idea how the VI would use her skills, and one of Ahern's many maxims came to mind.

_When in doubt, fucking cheat._

She used the scope of her rifle to scout out the area, looking for good, hard cover, and finally finding it some fifty feet away – a heavily reinforced building with a low ring of rubble all around it.

Leaping into the kanquess, she emerged next to the building, ducking down to avoid fire. Her omni chirped, picking up the EM spikes that a biotic charge caused – the VI clone was moving around as well.

For all of her life, Shepard had always been on the offensive. It was how she operated, how Vanguards were supposed to fight, and what she was best at. But she noticed the VI version of her was more defensive. Charging in and trying to overpower it would end up with her in its sights before she could take it out.

She scattered three or four tech-mines and omni-goop grenades in the ring of rubble surrounding the building, then placed down two more omni-goop grenades set to proximity in the main approach to the building before heading inside. It was a simple building, with a solid heavy construction that would not fall apart easily. Shepard was amazed at how realistic the simulation was, even if up close things looked a little flat and blurry.

She tucked herself into the far window and pulled her omnitool up again. She'd spent years learning a complete set of info-war techniques, and then hardly ever used them. Kicking herself mentally for her stupidity in the past, she began loading up a program and trying to remember how to set it up and fire it off.

O-ATTWN-O

Ahern carefully monitored the status board. The real Shepard had dug herself into a damnably tight defensive setup, ringed it with mines and grenades, and was obviously waiting for the clone to fuck up. The clone, on the other hand, was stealthily moving from cover to cover, checking angles, and approaching Shepard's rough location from the side.

Next to him, General Richard Collins, CO of the Arcturus military command, frowned. "This isn't the Butcher's usual MO, Ahern. This isn't even Vanguard tactics, from either of them. I thought she was supposed to be... well, charging and all of that. Neither one of them are acting like I would expect a Vanguard to behave."

Ahern snorted. "You ever seen a Vanguard major of marines, Collins?"

The older general's frown became thoughtful. "...well, no. Aside from her, that is."

Another person in the room, a major from Arcturus, gave a snort. "The highest ranking Vanguard besides Shepard was a Lieutenant Commander before they bought it, I believe. Most of them do not achieve high ranking."

Ahern laughed. "Yeah, there's a reason for that. The Vanguard battle style is great for close-quarters combat with lots of cover and no room to maneuver. Boarding and urban combat scenarios, mostly. But when range comes into play, the Vanguards tend to die, as they have to walk right into the enemy defense in order to get a hit off."

One of the Commissariat observers folded his arms. "Then why do we even have them?"

Ahern gestured at the field. "In a chaotic battle situation, a Vanguard can do real damage. And there's certainly a place for such a thing when dealing with batarians and pirates, who don't have a good answer to that sort of thing."

A rear admiral smiled thinly, watching Shepard move around in her tucked-in cover. "Then the source of your dislike for the program is because of … what, exactly? That others cannot use their soldiers correctly? Or that the tactics are not elegant?"

Ahern shrugged. "Partly. Mostly due to the fact that when faced with an opponent who is your equal, charging in without knowing what is ahead is suicide. Don't ever forget that Vanguards are something fucking krogan came up with, and they can use it to the best effectiveness given their durability. Why in the fuck someone thought humans would be good at it is beyond me."

Another major laughed. "Then no wonder she's been successful, given that she even terrifies krogan. Still, your point is taken – most Vanguard die before achieving high rank due to the high-risk nature of their combat style. BuPers should review this."

Ahern snickered. "Good luck on that."

Collins shrugged. "Hmm. If she's not using Vanguard tactics, what is she using?"

Ahern chuckled. "A mix of things, actually. I didn't change her basics – I haven't had enough time to really re-tool her basic combat moves – but I have given her a lot more flexibility and a grounding in proper cover tactics. Most of it is evasive and cover-based scouting and learning not to rely on any one aspect of her skills, but to mix 'em up. Combined with a better weapon choice and more tactical understanding of when and how to strike, she won't be doing the same thing, over and over."

Collins grunted. "That still sounds like you've changed her combat style. Given how much other training you must have had to complete, I begin to see why you think she needs more time. How much can she have picked up in a month?"

Ahern shook his head. "Watch and see."

O-ATTWN-O

Shepard finally finished her coding, launching a single scout drone from her omnitool. She'd studied drones during the info-war classes she took, but most non-engineers used pre-programmed drones, like Liara's gun drones, that launched automatically using a script. A true omni-drone was built from scratch using the omnitool, and required a certain level of finesse.

Given that she had not done this in over five years, her effort wasn't exactly Tali-level. This drone was barely capable of movement and basic sensing, but she knew it would be something unexpected. Ahern may have had this VI thing mimicking her moves based on tapes and recordings, but his words about training had reminded her that once upon a time, she'd learned literally everything the SA had to teach. It wouldn't expect what she had only rarely used.

The drone scuttled ahead, and Shepard loaded her sniper rifle with an autoswap routine, the first shot a shieldbreaker round, the second shot a disruptor round. Then she proximity primed two anti-biotic grenades. She kicked off the pre-charger on the Sunfire pistol and settled into cover.

She had an inkling of an idea. The VI had dominated because it neutralized Old Shepard's biotics – how would it react when its own were taken away?

Ahead, the drone bumbled along, before turning and picking up movement. A second later, a sniper round blew it apart. Shepard checked her omnitool, the shot came from her west. Grinning, Shepard carefully repositioned herself into slightly better cover, sighting downrange.

Her counterpart did a charge into a pile of wreckage for cover, carefully sweeping its rifle across the terrain. Shepard placed each one of her proximity anti-biotic grenades on her own body, one on each shoulder, before checking that her Sunfire was fully primed and ready to fire. She sighted in as carefully as she could, and fired twice with her sniper.

The first round, as expected, exploded across the VI-copy's shields, and the second slammed into its chest, scattering electrical arcs around its body and nullifying any biotics for a few seconds.. Shepard hurled into the kanquess immediately, slamming directly into the clone and hurling them both out of cover and to the ground, the clone's assault rifle flying out its hands.

Before anything else could happen, the two anti-biotic grenades on Shepard's shoulders went off with a whump. Gritting her teeth against the agony of the close-range biotic disruption, Shepard pulled her Sunfire pistol out and shot the clone directly in the face. Two shots splintered the helmet it wore as it was blasted back across the terrain.

Shepard holstered the pistol and leapt, tearing free her ODIN and firing twice at point-blank range. The blasts wrecked the armor further, and the VI managed to kick out and get out of the way of a third shot. It drew its own ODIN, firing in a pattern designed to back her off, and scrambled away, limping towards the ring of debris.

Shepard winced at the impact of the simulated hit. There wasn't any actual shotgun blast, but the simulated mass effect hit had hurt badly. She ducked into cover, letting the clone open the distance. Putting away her own shotgun to draw her assault rifle, she grinned as she saw it get close to the ring of debris. To encourage it along, she fired, placing short bursts into the VI-clone at will. It managed to evade the first two with rolls, but the third such blast staggered it, and it stumbled towards the ring of debris in desperate search for cover.

Shepard smiled savagely as the thing stumbled directly into a tech-mine. The explosion sent it flying, directly into yet another tech-mine, this one with an omni-goop grenade nearby.

Shepard felt her own bionics returning, and lashed out with warpfire over the area the VI clone had landed in, before using a pull on more rubble to drop it atop the spot. Pulling out her ODIN, she finally stepped out of cover, slowly advancing on the spot.

O-ATTWN-O

In the observation room, there was silence for several long seconds, before Ahern began to softly laugh.

Collins turned to face him. "What's funny?"

Ahern only smiled. "She's doing a lot better than I expected so far, that's all."

Collins arched an eyebrow. "So far? I would think she just won the fight, no?"

The commissar next to him nodded. "Very impressive. That's an ugly routine she came up with, combining the speed of the kanquess with the grenades to neutralize the VI. Pretty much an instant win."

Ahern snickered. "Shepard is known for one thing – being hard to kill. The VI is down, not out."

O-ATTWN-O

As she got closer to the scorched pile of debris, she saw the clone's ODIN shotgun to one side, tossed away by the blast. She carefully approached, her barrier at full, and stepped around the nearest debris pile to take in the downed form of her opponent.

The moment she did so, the clone moved. A push field flung all the debris straight at Shepard, many pieces striking her barrier and knocking her down. A chunk of simulated concrete struck her weapon hand hard enough to dislodge her ODIN, and a second later the VI clone charged her, exploding into a Nova that sent Shepard staggering away.

The thing pulled its Sunfire pistol, but it had not been charged. Shepard lashed out with a snap kick, knocking the weapon away just as Ahern had done to her, then closed in, her omni-blade unfolding as she went for a stab.

The battered VI clone parried her blow with its own omniblade. The simulation's Spectre armor was blasted to ruins, most of the helmet cracked and with blood streaming from several open wounds. Yet it met every swipe, kick, and thrust with the utmost precision.

Every assault she tried was effortlessly matched, and the thing outmaneuvered her, kicking at her knee and forcing her into a step-back, then hooking her leg and sending Shepard to the ground. A stomp followed, smashing into the knee joint hard enough to nearly make Shepard scream in agony, and she rolled out of the way.

The thing extended a hand, pulling its ODIN into its grip and firing. The blast rocked Shepard, and she felt a rib creak. Flashing status reports from her armor reported simulated damage to her right leg and arm which would slow her down.

Shepard hit her omni, triggering an overload program, the clone's ODIN giving a heavy blat of energy and then detonating violently in the clone's hands, scattering burning polonium all over the figure. Shepard blinked at this, and decided that the ODIN must have already been damaged. Not wasting her opportunity with the clone distracted, she got back to her feet and stumbled into combat range, planting a vicious omni-blade stab right into the clone's stomach.

It arched in agony, before giving an animalistic snarl and backhanding her, making her head ring. It charged her, swinging wildly, and Shepard ducked back from a pinning swipe, focusing hard with her biotics to lighten her weight before leaping back. The effect worked, letting her leap back several feet further than usual, and she then dodged back behind another pile of debris.

Her tech-mines were calibrated not to blow up on her, but when the clone charged in to close range again, it wasn't so lucky, and ate a third one.

Rather than do her usual and close in to finish it off, Shepard used pull to fling two more tech-mines at it, and followed up with explosive grenades. With a heavy digital screech that sounded like fury, the thing was blasted away, this time crashing to the ground, smoking.

Shepard levered herself up, drawing her Sunfire pistol and charging it. Even as she sighted in, though, the clone-VI gave an all-too familiar roar of rage and flashed into the kanquess, crashing into her.

Shepard fired even as the thing's omni-blade stabbed down. Her shot blew her doppelgangers head off, but her suit armor blared a warning of 'lethal impact' as the simulated omniblade hit her throat.

A moment later the form on top of her turned to blocky chunks of light, as the surroundings faded into black and orange gridded lines. She was lying on the floor, and a small crowd of people was watching her from the observation area above.

Grunting, she got to her feet, staring up. Ahern's voice came over the loudspeaker. "An interesting result. Get yourself cleaned up and head on back to my office. We have a few things to discuss."

She grunted, glancing around for her ODIN, which she picked up before departing.

O-ATTWN-O

By the time she had showered, changed back into uniform, and gotten to Ahern's office, her shoulder and back were starting to hurt from the mass-effect slams she'd taken.

The last memory of her VI charging her, roaring in anger, was stuck in her head. When the chips were down, even her VI lost itself to the hate. She found that darkly amusing and depressing at the same time, as she came to Ahern's door. Stopping a moment to compose herself, she entered his office, finding him talking to someone via commlink again, his voice acerbic and cutting.

"No, if I felt she wasn't capable of doing the job I would not sign off on this. The protests I made regarding this arrangement at the outset stand. Either she should get the respect of having the full training program to finish her naval training, or she should be assigned a Major of Marines to take command of her men. Putting both jobs under one hat remains fucking stupid."

The voice on the other side of the comm was cool and almost smug.. "Admiral Ahern, please remember that this was certainly not the Admiralty's concept. What I'm hearing sounds like uncertainty. She's either rated to command a battle group and the associated regiment, or she_ isn't_. It shouldn't be a nuanced answer."

Ahern folded his arms, glaring at the image on the screen."How in fuck are you High Admiral? Any question of if an officer is ready for a new command is a nuanced answer. Just because they complete training doesn't mean they get the concepts, and in this case, she gets the concepts but hasn't completed the full level of training. Assuming – not that I'm saying this mind you – that I say she's not quite ready but would be with a bit more time, would she get the training _then_?"

Rear Admiral Branson smiled and folded his own arms. "No, I am afraid not. Our recommendation would be that she have oversight of some kind, an idea the President seems resistant to, and claims is unneeded. Without further evidence of her unsuitability, our hands are tied. And while I understand your frustration, she has no more time to learn – even setting aside the fact that our fleet is depleted enough that her battle group is important, we cannot know when the Council will call on her as a Spectre."

Ahern grunted. "There's the problem. She can't have 'oversight' if she's a damned Spectre, now can she? That's the whole problem here, you want to fucking put a minder on her, and the President told you to stick it up your ass. I happen to agree, as any 'oversight' you're likely to give isn't going to cut the mustard."

Branson sneered. "That is beyond your purview, Admiral Ahern. Your task is merely to train and assess."

Ahern gave the younger man a cool smile. "I have no fucking clue who thought you'd be fit for this job, kid, but let me give you a piece of advice. There's a reason all the command level officers like you and her come through me before you get the nod for command, and that is because it IS within my ever-fucking purview to consider the shit that BuPers doesn't think of!"

Ahern triggered his omnitool. "Since you want to play it like this, though, my recommendation is simple. General Collins thinks she's more than ready. The Commissariat is pleased. She's passed all her training efforts here. She's fully qualified to command her battle-group and the associated regiment, although additional force training would be required for her to handle any larger force. She should go ahead and be promoted to at least naval Captain in light of her ratings, but as I understand it she needs more time in space for that to be possible."

Branson frowned. "Admiral, many feel she is not ready for this. You are aware that by signing your name to this, you are endorsing her abilities, and if she can't live up to them you will be called to account?"

Ahern leaned forward, a hard and dangerous smile on his face. "With all due respect, High Admiral, you are hardly fit for the role you have now. Whoever signed off on _your _elevation clearly didn't give a shit about that, or the fact that you have never even commanded more than a single ship in a battle, so spare me the 'not ready' bullshit."

He folded his arms. "She has commanded a small fleet action at least once, and she's a quick learner. I already said that if I wasn't comfortable with doing it, I'd have sent her ass back home with a note that says 'Sucks, airlock fastest'." His smile turned feral. "As for 'calling me to account', I'd like to see that shit."

He exhaled. "If there's nothing else, I have actual work to do."

Branson narrowed his eyes. "I will not forget this, Admiral."

Ahern snorted. "Good, maybe next time you'll think before you try your ignorant shitfuckery on me. Pinnacle out." He punched the control to kill the comm, shaking his head. "Goddamned arrogant ass fake."

Ahern turned to face Shepard, stepping down from the elevated section of his office. "The fuck are you just standing there for, woman? Sit down." He pointed to the couches, before going over to his mini-fridge and pulling out a bottle and two glasses.

He sat down across from her, pouring brandy into both glasses, and picked up one. "That was very unexpected, Shepard, how you handled your mirror match. I was rather hoping you'd do something to impress me, but I didn't expect that. Made me laugh my ass off when you pulled out that drone. Brass watching was pretty goddamned impressed."

Shepard glanced at the comms panel before flicking her eyes back to Ahern, nodding slowly. "I kept in mind one of your rules, sir. When in doubt, fucking cheat. Fighting that thing on even odds would have just gotten me killed."

He smiled. "Yes, it would have been. The definition of insanity is seeing that something won't fucking work and doing the shit anyway. There were lots of approaches you could have used – none of them 'wrong' – as long as you kept the key points in mind. They can't hit what they can't fucking see."

She nodded. "Did the match help you fix...whatever the hell was wrong with the thing?"

Ahern nodded. "We did a lot of analysis modeling based on your fight, and I think I've pinned down the problem. The tactical subroutine the thing uses to figure out its actions is actually modeling moves ahead of time, based on the combat data is has regarding the person that it is fighting. We saw this happen repeatedly in your fight when you did something outside of your norms, as it kept trying to model your next action off of previous actions and couldn't find a reference."

He sipped his brandy. "With that fixed, we think the resulting matches will be more realistic and even, rather than fighting a goddamned chess-master who can predict your moves before you even pull them off. That functionality was never intended, although we've copied it off to put into the combat VI we're going to build from it."

He smiled. "So, in that regard, you did help me out, as intended. And you did indeed drop the thing, but it killed you all the same. What did you take away from this clusterfuck of a fight, Shepard?"

She sat back, thinking. "First, that when I think outside my own box, and use all this shit I've bothered to learn over the years, I can do more than just jump around. Molding the battlefield will let me use my own biotics and other skills more effectively. The flips side of that is I cannot let the enemy prepare a battle site against me, or I could end up like the VI-clone did. With just a bit of booby trapping and a couple of snipers, someone could take me out very quickly."

He nodded, and she continued. "Second, that no matter how good my tactics are, or how much effort I put into isolating all the danger factors, shit can and will go wrong. I should have opened range at the end, out of kanquess range at least. I let myself get too confident."

He nodded again, but waggled a hand. "To a degree, Shepard, that's true of all people. I think the issue is that you biotics get too full of your own blue bullshit and forget you are not invulnerable. A biotic barrier can take a lot more damage than a kinetic one can. It can keep you alive in situations where a normal fighter would be splatter on the ground. But once it goes down, you aren't any tougher or stronger than anybody else, and your tactics need to drill into your head that evasion is needed before you get to that point."

She nodded. "Understood."

He sipped his drink again. "As far as the wager goes, you sort of won, but still lost. Were you actually interested in the house?"

She nodded, and he chuckled. "Make me that shotgun, and it is yours. I'll pay for the materials. A fair trade."

She nodded more slowly. "I'll need those materials – I have a list, actually – and a good omni-foundry. I have one in my quarters, but that one is small scale and would take too long. I'll also need a restricted type six ammo-caster to make the wedge shaver for the ammo...and you'll have to find your own polonium. My supply is already pretty tight. It can use UF6 instead but I don't have enough of that to share either."

Ahern snorted. "You really are fucking crazy if you use uranium hexafluoride as goddamned ammo. I can scare up some polonium easy enough, at least enough for a few ammo blocks." He smiled. "Given that your crews and officers are good to go, all that remains is final shakedown and security certs. Your captains will be doing shakedown runs until Wednesday, and we'll be doing touch up repairs and final fittings until Friday. Officially you ship out at Friday, 1500 hours. Unofficially...we're done."

She gestured to the comms screen. "I saw you talking with Rear Admiral Branson..."

Ahern sighed. "You're in a unique and ugly situation, Shepard. A commander usually runs a frigate or a destroyer escort. A battle group is usually run by a captain, sometimes a rear admiral. While your rank as Major of Marines is on paper on par with that of a Rear Admiral, your _training _isn't. I've done my best to give you a good grounding on fleet command. And your destroyer and frigate captains will certainly work with you to improve that."

He met her gaze evenly. "But the fact remains that you are very much untested in being able to coordinate a space battle of multiple ships. The Normandy was very successful, but it was a severely over-weaponed, over-powered brute of a frigate, piloted by the scariest fucking pilot I've ever seen and going into situations where no one knew what it could do. You try any of that shit in a normal frigate and you'd be space dust."

Shepard nodded. "The Kazan is also pretty incredible, sir...but if I understand tactics correctly, I'm not to lead it into battle, but to hang back and support the other ships?"

Ahern nodded. "Exactly! Good. You aren't an idiot after all, just very slow." He smirked, then his mirth faded. "More seriously … I've argued you need more time and training on this aspect of things, but the fuckers want to use it as ammunition against you."

He jutted his jaw out. "Not on my fucking watch. Just don't make a fucking intergalactic clown out of me by getting your ass handed to you in your first heavy space battle."

She smirked. "I'll...try not to. What else is on the schedule?"

Ahern sighed. "I have to rest after this month, to be honest. Training your pack of fuckups was exhausting. For the rest of the week, you're on your own – you might want to run training for your people, or review more of the tactics with my trainers if you have the inclination and time. I'll meet up with you Thursday to discuss the house and for you to give me my shotgun."

He stood. "Other than that, Major-Commander, it is with no lack of honest pleasure that I can say you may not be perfectly trained, or demonstrate every skill others may want out of you, but I would be honored to share a trench with you and trust you to watch my back in any fight, Shepard." He extended his hand, and she shook it, the outright compliment pleasing her on a level she didn't expect.

"I...thank you, Admiral." She paused. "I tried the best I could – "

He held up a hand. "Shepard, you've done that your whole career. Like I said, I made assumptions. I know better. No one should be able to complain about you, with the shit you had to deal with. That doesn't mean you get a free pass for it. I won't coddle you and tell you that you haven't fucked up bad in the past, or give you a hug and tell you it will be alright."

He folded his arms, eyes hard. "I will tell you that life merely fucking is what it is. Some enjoy it, some tolerate it, some stumble the fuck through it without ever getting the point. And the point is to fucking _live your life,_ not waste it – not on patriotism, not on ideals, not on dumb shit and certainly not on beating yourself up over shit you can't change."

He exhaled. "I've lost more than most people ever had – but I don't get depressed or whiny or tear up like a shitfaced emo clown, _because I am motherfucking Tradius Ahern_, the baddest sonofabitch in this entire fucking galaxy." He unfolded his arms to jab a finger into her shoulder. "And _that _is what you need to be telling yourself when you get up every morning. When you stare into your mirror and brush your teeth."

He stepped back, adjusting his uniform. "People don't like it, tell 'em the airlock is open for everyone."

She gave a small smile. "Lots of people telling me that lately, sir – that I need to believe in myself."

Ahern rolled his eyes. "Then maybe you should, you know, fucking listen to what you're being told?" He drained his drink, and gave her a hard, tight smile. "I'm satisfied you learned what you needed to, if you actually remember it. You aren't perfect. You never will be, stop trying. Whatever the fuck happens next in your life had better be your call, not someone else jerking your strings."

He paused, glancing away, then back. "I want to tell you one more thing, Shepard, and it won't be an easy thing for you to hear. It isn't something I would have thrown onto your lap...but I don't let marines wander into the fucking wild blue yonder without giving them a heads up."

She frowned. "I'm listening, sir."

He gave a deep sigh, weary and full of disgust. "Preston Kyle was one of my closest friends. A brilliant and tough sonofabitch. For him to do what he did – blowing himself up – means there's something bad going on in the SA, something that he couldn't stomach, or with all his influence, change. I know some of what set him off, but not all of it."

She nodded slowly. "He gave me an OSD about some of it. It dovetailed with what I learned about Cerberus."

Ahern nodded. "Before he died, Kyle sent me a strange message and an OSD, too. A set of coordinates and security codes, old security codes. From the message, it sounds like he didn't know if he'd get to see you or not before what he'd been planning went off."

He exhaled. "The coordinates and the OSD are for you. I've given some thought to check it out myself, but I won't have the chance until my transfer comes, and there are always going to be a lot of eyes on me."

He looked at her, hard. "There's nasty shit going down, and has been going down for a while. Kyle did what he could to put it into the open enough that the people behind it backed off. That doesn't mean the shit stopped. You are already caught up in it. I'm not going to try and fuck with your head too much, but do not fucking trust your superiors."

She grimaced. "I already figured out that much. But the President seems on the up and up..."

Ahern snorted. "They don't tell him everything, and I have my doubts that he's any better than the rest of them. All this shit they're throwing at you may well be so that you can have the independence a Spectre needs...but I think it is also to make you feel gratitude towards the SA, given the shit you have learned."

She thought on this, nodding again. "It would explain a lot, sir. I honestly expected to get fucked over and out when I turned this shit up. And I expected lots of push-back on Liara...on adding her and Tali to my crew...lots of things. The nobility thing … "

Ahern narrowed his eyes. "There's a justification for all of it. Nobility because it gets rid of that Z2 bullshit and removes you from being unduly influenced by the Commissars. The double promotion so that you outrank most anyone who doesn't know what's really going on in the SA, and that you have the rank to justify you working for the President directly. Overlooking your girlfriend and your fraternization so your brain doesn't melt."

He folded his arms again. "But behind each of those is a darker reason, Shepard. Nobles handle their own shit, and no one can see what they're up to – and if they need to shut you up, no one would ever know why. The double promotion makes you very reliant on advice from your more experienced subordinates and opens you up to a world of political bullshit you aren't equipped to handle. The thing with Liara is that she makes a really handy way to keep you in line if you get out of hand."

Shepard's expression darkened, and Ahern nodded. She was silent for several seconds before biting her lip, then speaking. "There's more, isn't there?"

Ahern sighed and nodded. "Knowing it will just fuck your head up. Whatever was going to happen, I think, has been completely derailed. It isn't as important as remembering that while there are only a few bad apples in the SA...they're big fucking apples. You try to do anything about it, you will get yourself and your friends killed deader than dog shit."

She sighed. "So what do I do?"

Ahern narrowed his eyes. "Take the OSD and listen to Kyle's message. When you get a chance, check out what he says. Find people you trust who have the power to do something about the shit and let them know – do not run off and try to be a fucking hero. Most of all, keep it quiet."

She nodded at this. "And who do I trust with... shit like this?"

Ahern snorted. "You can trust me, given that I had the thing. As for anyone else...vouching for people in high places leaves a bad taste in my mouth."

His eyes darkened with old memories. "And I may not be the best judge of fucking character. I'd have said trust Rachel Florez not that long ago. I can't even be 100% sure my old friend Yonis Chu is truly trustworthy – Kyle didn't let anybody but me know about this OSD." He looked at her. "Whoever you decide to trust, make sure they can actually do something about it."

Shepard frowned. "I can trust David, and Liara."

Ahern raised an eyebrow. "I said people with the power to do something about it, Shepard. Your girlfriend is not going to have that anytime soon. I'm pretty sure that if you're in her brain, you know if she can be trusted or not. But I will say that no matter how much you love her, Shepard – she's still a liability, a weak spot any fool can see, and once you marry the girl, a gigantic fucking target. Bringing her in on this shit is just going to make her a bigger target."

He folded his arms."As far as Anderson goes... the kindest thing I can say is that the man is blinded by his emotions towards you and isn't seeing clearly about some things. I'd keep that in mind when it comes down to who you place your trust in. He has a lot of influence – some of his more distant relatives are nobles, and Kahlee Sanders is Jon Grissom's daughter."

He looked at her steadily. "I know he's close to you. But if you make him choose between you and the SA, you may not like the answer you get."

She snorted. "Isn't that the same for you, sir?"

He shook his head. "Unlike a goddamned Commissar, I like being able to look in the mirror in the morning. I disagree with a LOT of the shit the SA is into, and I'd have been Fleet Master or fucking High Admiral a decade ago if I had kept my mouth shut on it. The fact that I've been training people in the ass end of nowhere for years is my punishment. If it came down to the SA, or the PEOPLE of the SA?"

He fingered his uniform with a small smile. "You already know that answer, Shepard."

She nodded. "Yeah. I just...Anderson is the person who's done more for me than anyone else. He's the closest thing I have to a father. I trust his advice more than anyone. I told him already about what Kyle's OSD to me had on it, at least some of it."

Ahern narrowed his eyes. "I'm not telling you to abandon the man, and I'm not saying he's going to double cross you. I'm saying that his priorities aren't yours. There's … " He trailed off.

She frowned. "Sir?"

He shook his head, speaking slowly. "There's old history between me and Anderson. His unit was tapped for N7 at the same time as mine was. I've seen more than once where he lets his idealism trump his goddamned common sense. It burned him back then. It burned him with Saren. It could end up burning you, if you aren't careful."

He didn't voice his true suspicions – that Anderson had known about Cerberus' interference in Shepard's early life. He was either there that day to recruit her for Cerberus … or kill her before Cerberus could. Ahern suspected either way Shepard's actions in saving his life from random violence changed his mind, but that was supposition.

Instead, he just pulled an OSD from his pocket. "Whoever you trust is up to you, not me. These are the coordinates and the sec codes Kyle sent, along with a pretty goddamned cryptic message. Based on what is on here, he knew sooner or later you'd come here, and wanted me to get this to you when you were ready for it. There's something else on here that's code-locked to some questions about you I couldn't answer. Whoever you tell and trust with this knowledge should only be told AFTER you make backups."

He handed it to her, and she folded her fingers around it. "I didn't like the last one I got, sir. I'll probably like this one even less."

Ahern shrugged, and turned away, walking up to his desk. "We all do shit we don't like, Shepard. If you find out something from that and you need advice – call me."

She nodded, then turned to go. She paused at the doorway, half turning to face him. "Admiral Ahern. Thank you again for taking the time to train me. I … am very grateful you did, that you had faith in me. That you risked your own reputation on me." She paused, and spoke more softly. "That you helped me realize how to improve myself."

Ahern looked back at her, his expression almost sad. "I'd do the same for any marine, Shepard. If you want to thank me, stay alive. Remember the Rules. And knock some respect into that mouthy ass pilot of yours."

She laughed, and exited the office.


	16. Chapter 16 : A Change of Pace

_**A/N:** Surprise!  
_

_I've been busy with work and personal stuff but I managed to get this out so people will stop worrying it's dead. IT WILL NEVER DIE. _

_This chapter is shorter than usual, but it is basically the end of ACT I. The next chapter will be kicking off ACT II, featuring fighting, weddings, Zaeed Massani, and Tela Vasir. The chapter has not been beta'd or reviewed by Progman, so ... it may suck :D_

* * *

__'Illogical deduction and data-extrapolation based on inaccurate and incomplete assessments appear to be the primary organic method of decision making.'  
__

__ – Prime 302, from the Broker's Personal Files  
__

* * *

The last few days of Shepard's time on Pinnacle passed all too quickly in her estimation, each day having a tendency to blur together and leave her exhausted. Too much of her time was consumed in a morass of paperwork, reviews of dockwork and the like to snatch much time for herself.

Monday and Tuesday were complete losses. She had no time to go over the OSD from Ahern, as she was instead distracted with the last minute preparations for bringing Battlegroup Chiron to full readiness. Supplies had to be on-loaded, crew manifests checked and rechecked. Extra crew were brought on, which meant the Commissars were busy profiling them for PRIDE ratings she had to review, and the entire Marine contingent of the entire battle group had to be assembled for final inspection. To top it all off, BuShips had to do final inspections, security patches and additional certifications had to be completed.

All of it requiring the BG CO to sign a bajillion electronic documents and stand around her cruiser watching strange security types fiddling with it. By the end of Tuesday she was too tired to do anything but collapse into fitful sleep in her quarters, not even waking up when Liara laid down next to her.

Thankfully, the last of such crap was over with by Wednesday morning, letting her have a nice lunch with Liara, Tali, and Cole. The young Marine lieutenant brought her up to speed on her marines, noting that at least Beta Squad had been moved into upgraded armor thanks to Dallas's clever use of the Training Command's ability to requisition things for advanced training, and most of the Marines had been moved into at least Crisis armor, which was a good upgrade from the Onyx. Getting hold of expensive stuff like Colossus would take more time but Cole was ready for it.

Wednesday afternoon passed slowly, as she finally was able to work on Ahern's shotgun, something she found immensely enjoyable. She had not worked on an ODIN since the debacle with the prototype, and she had made a few tweaks to the design in the years since then. The simplicity of working on it, requiring focus and calm, was like a balm to her.

Her thoughts bent again towards what would happen once they left Pinnacle – a swift trip back to Arcturus, a wedding she had no real idea of how to handle (or what would even be happening), some time off – true time off, for the first time in her life – and then off to battle … Lord only knew what. She wasn't sure where she was headed and found that both exhilarating and worrying, but kept her focus on the shotgun as she daydreamed.

She was doing inlay work to connect the omni-bayonet generator to the underbarrel when Lieutenant Commander Colms and Lieutenant Dallas found her at the Pinnacle Armory, with the two of them pitching a complicated story about swapping some of the Kazan's extra microtooling equipment in exchange for a full omni-foundry from Pinnacle. This was to allow Colms to modify the Phaeston rifles Dallas had gotten a hold of to use standard SA rounds instead of the turian APP round, and maybe to upgrade the marine's armor even further without having to order brand new suits.

She'd signed off on that, and then had to endure fifteen minutes of Colms trying to inveigle her into some kind of weapons design work involving the guns of the fighters onboard the Kazan. She laughed at the very concept and dismissed him, informing him that while she might be good at weapons design, right now she was simply too overloaded to do anything like that.

She wasn't about to turn into some nut who sat around all day thinking up giant bombs. She went back to work, and spent another two hours on the ODIN before it was finished, thinking about what she could do with a full omni-foundry like this. Her notebook was still full of weapons designs, and assuming her job was not going to be a clusterfuck like chasing Saren had been, she'd have the time to actually work on things.

She understood why Colms kept bugging her, in a way. She knew she was good at designing personal weapons. With her, each weapon was fresh and new, and it had to be customized to fit the owner. Her ODIN was smaller than Ahern's would be, with a different balance even aside from the customization he wanted.

But there was a fine line between the kind of designs she did and the kind of weapons Colms came up with. His Kyle-class torpedoes were just disgusting, and most of the other stuff the guy worked on was equally disturbing. She designed weapons to clear her mind, not out of what ever drove Colms.

As Ahern had put it, that guy was going to build a giant bomb one day and get them all killed.

As she adjusted the last bits of the ODIN, the prospect of exactly what she was getting into occupied her mind once again. First, she was getting married, partly to offset Liara's vulnerability to the Justicars, partly to justify her own nobility to the Lords of Sol. Neither of those was the right goddamned reason for getting married.

Shepard frowned, fiddling with the drum-heatsink as she thought. It wasn't that she didn't love Liara. It was more along the lines that she felt her life was being pushed into directions she had no control over. She'd gone along with it because it was all so overwhelming – and getting out of her Z2 restriction was surely better than keeping it.

But given that she'd never even had a chance to dream about something like this, the fact that it would be happening in a few days made her both self-conscious and nervous. The media would know. Everyone would know. The Normandy had taken the news pretty well, because they'd been forged together in fire, had seen Liara nearly die more than once going after Saren and Cerberus. And even then, there were times Ashley had given her a look that didn't seem entirely happy about the situation.

A lot of people wouldn't like their relationship. She didn't mind hateful things being said about her – she deserved most of them. Liara didn't – she'd been dragged into this entire mess unsuspecting, and while she'd certainly hoped to have Shepard interested in her, she'd never dreamed it would actually happen, much less that they'd be bonded.

She sighed, cleaning up the omni-foundry as she finished up with the shotgun. The second bigger problem is she had no idea what she was doing. _Why_ had she been given an entire battlegroup in the first place? Ahern's answers didn't give her any warm fuzzies, and the vague hints that she'd be deployed to batarian space after she dealt with this Ylana bitch weren't that reassuring either.

She thought over that as she made the short trip to Ahern's office to drop the shotgun off, arriving to find him still there, going over paperwork. He glanced up as she entered his office, grunting. "Shepard. You review that OSD yet?"

She shook her head, shrugging as she pulled the shotgun out of the carrypak she'd hauled it to his office in. "Not yet, sir. After I finish up with you I'm going to take a shuttle out beyond EM sensing range and review it there. I've got a portable jammer and I can scan the shuttle for bugs or anything."

He nodded, setting down his padd. "Probably a good idea, given the shit that must be on there." His eyes took in the shotgun as she took a few steps forward and handed it to him. "Ahh."

The ODIN she'd made for him was slightly bigger than her own, even though he was shorter, due to his heavy muscle mass. The barrel was a hexagon, a slot of metal below it generating the omni-bayonet he'd demanded, and he smiled as it flicked to life, glowing a fierce orange. "Very nice, Shepard. I still think you should get the fuck out of Marine life and make guns for a living."

She smiled faintly. "I've wanted to do that, sir, but being a Z2...and the crap that went wrong with the ODIN and Oracal Demolitions the first time didn't help. I may take another stab at it whenever my life calms down. Not sure yet."

He nodded more soberly, setting the gun down on the desk. "Well, that's your part of the bargain. Here's mine." He picked up a blue-glowing security chit from his desk, tabbing it with his thumbprint before handing it over. "Deed to the house, signed over to one Baroness Sara Ying Shepard. Most of the furniture has been pulled – excepting the omni-foundry – but the appliances are still there. There's an air-car I never got around to using much I left in the garage because the price to haul one to the goddamned Citadel is pure fucking piracy. The mayor of the planet knows I gave the place over to you, so the nosy bastard will probably want to talk to you at some point when you come back – despite the fact that he's in everyone's business, he's a good man and his wife is asari so he can probably relate."

She nodded and took it, tucking it in her pocket. "Thank you, Admiral. I.." She trailed off, shaking her head. "I haven't actually owned much of anything in my life. Whatever my parents had never came to me, and being a Z2 means you can't own property. For years I've been living out of my shipbag, or in a crappy 'secure' apartment with basics under heavy Commissariat guard between postings."

She smiled a bit wider, and Ahern sighed. "If you start crying, Shepard, I will backhand you." She laughed at that, and he smirked. "Alright, get the fuck out of my office. I have to go test this thing out and I don't need an audience."

She saluted sharply. "Yes sir. Thank you … for everything."

He shook his head ruefully and returned it. "You're the first person who's ever thanked me for beating their ass like a drum, Shepard."

Her smile faltered a bit, and she nodded. "You're the first person … who has bothered."

With that she turned away, headed out without a look back, walking purposefully towards the Kazan. It took her a good thirty minutes to get to the docking area without an air-car, but she needed the walk to clear her head.

Emotions always messed with her, and nowadays they came so fast and hard that she wondered if she was beginning to crack up. Jiong told her she was acclimating to things, but she felt more like a blindfolded person on a roller-coaster, wondering when the next big dip or fall was coming. The walk let her just empty her mind a bit, and by the time she got back to the Kazan, she was a little more settled.

She knew from a message she'd gotten that morning that Liara would be buried in the science labs doing something with more stuff sent from the Mars Archive, and Shepard didn't want to interrupt. The feeling of simple, happy pleasure and excited joy Liara was emitting from working on her personal passion lifted some of the funk from Shepard's own psyche, and she decided that going down there would just be counterproductive.

Instead she boarded the ship, taking the elevator down to the shuttle bay, and spent a few minutes checking over the shuttles. Finally finding them all about the same, she picked one and got into it. She had not flown a shuttle in years, but the steps had not changed much, even if she was slow about it. She went through the start-up steps carefully, and finally triggered the comms panel.

"Kazan, this is Major Shepard. Open shuttlebay two doors. Going out for external inspection."

The voice of one of the pilots sounded clearly. "Acknowledged, ma'am. Opening doors in five."

She waited until the energy field dropped and the shuttle bay doors slid open ponderously, and brought up the engine power. She eased the shuttle out, coasting away from the Kazan and banking to the left to overlook the length of the ship. She smiled faintly at the sight of the rest of her ships in a line of gleaming white and blue, a few still being worked on, showers of sparks drifting here and there from welding crews.

Accelerating away until the touch of Liara's mind on her own faded, she coasted to a stop and pulled out one of Dallas' jamming devices. Turning it on, she did a sweep with her omni-tool for any bugs or active sensors, before pulling out the OSD Ahern gave her and slotting it into the console.

There was a list of files – the same ones on the OSD she had been given – and two video files. The first was keyed to Ahern, and required a password she didn't have. The second was apparently keyed to her.

She triggered it, and a line of text came up on her display.

"If this is Shepard, then Ahern must have gotten this to you after my death. Before I continue, name the place where we had our little tussle."

She laughed, remembering. When she'd first moved under his command, she'd was very upset that her team was not also promoted as she was, and ended up arguing with Kyle over it while they were in the armor bay of their dropship. He'd been out of sorts himself that day, and had flipped her almost absently into a stack of boxes which had collapsed on her, a moment before the impact shock dropped a grating down over the bay, trapping her inside.

Dunn, being the asshole he was, had dubbed it the Sheep Pen. She typed that into her omni-tool, and the OSD flickered and displayed a haptic image of Kyle.

The Kyle in this OSD was a little more haggard than when she'd last seen him, although with the hair length about the same. "Not much time to put this together, Shepard. If you have this OSD, I can only presume you have finished your training with Ahern. I can also presume I am dead."

The image smiled. "I hate how melodramatic that sounds, but the past few months have been … worse than anything in my life. I am not the same man I used to be, after what I have learned." He paused. "In any event, if I am not dead and instead 'vanished' – you should consider your life in vast danger and destroy this OSD immediately, as they will have prepared against anything you could do with this information."

Kyle grimaced. "I cannot predict all eventualities. It may be that you end up seeing me before you see Ahern, for whatever reason. I'll have something prepared for you in that case, but if you have already seen me before seeing this OSD, it means something went off the rails somewhere. As I always told you, plan for failure."

His voice became hard. "The Systems Alliance once had to do many unsavory things just to survive, and it still does. All races do. The reasons why are not important, and one could argue that the reasons may actually be valid. You will have no doubt learned by now that the rest of the galaxy is a vile place, and wracked with evil. That does not excuse us from what we have done … but the ends often justify the means for many people"

He grimaced again. "Yet, no matter the reasons we may have had at the outset, things have changed. What is important is that in the SA, or at least certain elements of the SA, the goal has gone from 'survival' to insanity. There is a small, but powerful element in our government under no oversight that plans to commit atrocity in the name of human survival, and they have to be stopped."

"I could give you name, but that would just get you killed. The information on this OSD is the tip of the iceberg. It is dangerous enough to disrupt some of the stuff that's already out in the open. It won't bring down the real criminals. They're so powerful that I'm not sure they can be brought down without destroying the SA itself." He paused. "Or that bringing them down is even possible, to be honest."

"There is a location and security file on this OSD. If my plan works out – I've had to throw this together pretty quickly – you should be a Spectre and either a Captain or a Major by the time you get this OSD. Ahern should have trained you – _listen to him_. He can be trusted. You can share the files on this OSD with whoever you think can be trusted – but not the location."

His image exhaled, eyes dark. "The really bad things I've found can't be put on an OSD that might fall into the hands of God knows who. The location will have more information. Don't go until you are sure you won't be tailed or followed, and destroy the location once you've learned everything."

Kyle's face broke into a sad smile. "I may not get the chance to say goodbye in person, Sara. If that is the case...then understand this: you are not responsible for the death of my boys. I forgive you, if that is what you need, but their deaths would have happened even if you had been right in front of them to protect them. It's discovering this fact that lead me down the dark path I'm on now."

The image's smile faded. "Torfan was one of many things the SA fumbled on, but those were intentional. If this was just some group of old men plotting to dominate the SA, I wouldn't be so worried. It's worse than that. I trust you with this information because you won't put up with it. I will do what I can to derail what I've found out, but I doubt I will be successful. Once you know everything, you'll have to decide on whether or not you will act."

The image looked up. "And I do mean decide. You may look over what I've found out and come to the realization that doing anything would just get you killed. You may find that you simply don't have the power to bring these people down. You have to decide what to do that point."

He smiled. "I've already made up my mind what I am going to do. I'm going to embarrass them, and hopefully draw their eye away from Ahern, and you, and a few other people I know. They will try and stop me. They won't be able to, but they'll try. No matter what happens or what you decide, don't do anything involving General Rachel Florez and this information. She cannot be trusted."

The image reached for a panel. "It's in your hands now. Good luck, Shepard."

It clicked off, and she frowned, checking the OSD again. The location file was there, along with an encrypted security key. Punching up the coordinates, she found it was an empty star system on the fringe of Alliance space.

She sat back in the shuttle, thinking on what to do next. The system in question was out of the way enough that getting there would be a bit of a hassle given the FTL distance, but it could be done in a shuttle. The real question was when.

During the time off she had coming, or after she cleaned up whatever the fuck was going on with this Ylana tramp?

Sighing, she copied the coordinates to her own omni-tool, encrypting them behind a phrase using the Prothean language that she was pretty sure no one else could even know about except Liara and maybe Matriarch Aethyta. After that she atomized the OSD using her omni-tool and jettisoned the ashes, and piloted the ship back to the Kazan.

As she was getting out, the hangar bay door opened and Jiong stepped through, his expression tight. "Major."

She paused, eyes narrowing. "Commissar?"

Jiong stepped forward, his expression a touch grim. "The Admiralty is on the line – there has been an … incident."

O-ATTWN-O

Shepard sat down at her desk in her stateroom, punching up her comm panel. "Ensign Traynor, put me through to the Admiralty, top encryption, and make sure everyone knows I'm not to be disturbed."

Traynor's English accent lilted across the comm unit. "Yes, ma'am. Establishing link now."

Shepard exhaled, tugging at her uniform top. The quick walk back to the elevator had been done with Jiong telling her what little he knew – barely fifteen minutes ago, the Systems Alliance had declared a region-wide _Exitialis_ alert status for the Attican Traverse border. She waited as the encryption went through and then the vidscreen lit up, displaying the grim visage of Fleet Master Dragunov sitting next to Admiral Branson.

Dragunov's eyes narrowed. "Major-Commander. Are you secure?"

She nodded. "I am, sir."

Dragunov's mouth narrowed into a hard line. "Before we get started, what is the status of Battlegroup Chiron?"

She exhaled. "The battlegroup is nearly ready, sir. All training has been completed. The destroyers have been repaired to full battle specifications, and BuShips cleared them for full duty yesterday. The frigates have all be refitted per design, and the only thing we're waiting on for them is final cert on their marine contingent, wrapping up later on today. The Kazan is at full readiness and we are ready for action, sir."

He nodded, then tapped a padd barely visible on screen. "Eleven hours ago, the 23rd Scout Flotilla operating near the Traverse picked up a distress call from a quarian Flotilla scoutship. The scoutship had been engaged by a geth patrol, barely escaping with functional engines. From the scans they took, they found a major geth fleet anchorage – one outside the Perseus Veil."

He glanced aside at Admiral Branson, a look of rage in his eyes, before continuing. "The decision was made for the scout flotilla, along with a couple of cruisers and a nearby patrol of turian vessels, to strike at the anchorage. Based on the scans, they were expecting a stiff but winnable fight – about fifteen to twenty geth cruisers and fifteen or so frigates, with two or three of the cruisers possibly a heavy." He paused. "Instead they ran into over a hundred cruisers and a dreadnought hidden in a stellar gas cloud inside the system. The last report we had from the battle indicated the heavy cruiser Agincourt, with the command staff of the flotilla, had gone down with all hands."

He sighed, and Admiral Branson spoke in a low voice. "The outcome seems to be well in hand, despite heavy losses. However, the flotilla requires a command and control staff and new tasking, and frankly we need someone to go in to the ground facility we found and figure out what the hell the geth were up to. Unfortunately, we have no AIS assets in place that we can move in short order due to the fact that the AIS is still rebuilding their naval force."

Branson tapped a datapad at his left, and her own command console chimed with new orders. "As such, since you're the closest battlegroup we have at hand, we are tasking you with new orders. You are to make best possible efforts to de-moor and proceed at highest safe rated speed to the Yrtah system, where the geth anchorage was located. Orders are being dispatched for a command staff, lead by Rear Admiral Jaena Schulman , KoUE, to take command of the Twenty-Third – she will board your ship, and you will convey her and her staff there. Upon arrival and disembarkation of the admiral, inspect and analyze the geth facilities found at Yrtah-III for possible information or clues. You have a geth expert, Lieutenant Commander Zorah, as well as a pair of AIS operatives aboard your ship, so you are the only unit equipped to handle this task."

She nodded. "Orders after that?"

Dragunov spoke up. "Fastest rated speed to Arcturus for debrief and leave, as was planned before this. We'll brief you on the Traverse operations we want – along with this task the Citadel Council has set you – once you get done with leave. Any shakedowns or maintenance left wanting due to your early pull out will be handled then."

Branson gave a thin smile. "We would like very much to know exactly what the geth are up to, Major-Commander. Any information you find will be of interest to both myself as well as Admiral Vandefar in R&amp;D. Do you have any questions?"

She shook her head. "None, sir. I'll instruct my XO and get the battle group moving fastest."

Dragunov's eyes narrowed. "Good. Admiralty out."

The link died, and Shepard cursed for several seconds before savagely jabbing the comm link. "Traynor, issue immediate recall Alpha to all ship's company. Contact the battlegroup CO's and have them in my stateroom in fifteen." Without pausing to hear her reply, she flicked over to Pressly's comm-link. "XO."

Pressly's deep voice sound. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Shitstorm just blew up. We have an admiral and a C&amp;C staff coming aboard shortly. We have flag quarters or anything?"

Pressly's voice tightened. "We have a VIP room on deck three, and some extra quarters for officers – we can make it fit. What's going on?"

Shepard sighed. "We pull out as soon as everyone is aboard, flank. Scout flotilla in the Traverse got mauled when they tripped over a geth fleet base, and the Admiralty wants us to check it out before we head back to Arcturus. I've sent an alert to the CO's to get in my stateroom in fifteen, I need you and Jiong there as well."

"Yes ma'am. I'll get things rolling in terms of watches and have engineering spin up the core."

She clicked off, rubbing her temples, and then decided to grab a quick shower as she waited. By the time she got done and into a fresh uniform, eighteen minutes had passed. She exited her quarters and crossed the short hallway back into her stateroom to find it full.

She sat down at her desk, glancing at her destroyer and frigate captains, and the calm faces of Jiong and Pressly. "I've already pushed orders to your commlinks, but here's the quick version – the Admiralty wants us to pull out ASAP and head to the Traverse. We're carrying an admiral to take command of the flotilla that's there, and then investigating the third planet for a geth base."

She glanced around. "All the ships are ready?"

Captain von Khar nodded, rubbing his chin. "Yes, ma'am. BuShips is dragging ass on final cert of the stealth system on the Cannae, but it works well enough for a fight. We'll be finished onloading ship stores in an hour or so..."

She nodded. "Anyone who feels their ship needs more time?" No one spoke, and she smiled. "Good. Have your ships ready for a 1900 departure, then. When it comes time to hit the ground, deploy your marines from orbit in MAKO's at a drop point I will designate at that time. I'll push out some further orders once we know more about what we're dealing with."

One of the frigate captains spoke. "What about our leave?"

She snorted. "As soon as we drop this admiral off and investigate the base – figure a day travel and maybe a day to look around and FTL out of the system – we're instructed to make best speed to Arcturus for leave. No worries there."

She gestured to Pressly. "Route operational concerns through either Captain von Khar or Commander Pressly, and security concerns to Commissar-Captain Jiong. I have to go pick up the admiral, so that's all I have for now. Dismissed."

The group shuffled out of the stateroom with the exception of Jiong. "You think the battlegroup is ready for this, Shepard?"

She shrugged. "Only one way to find out."


	17. Chapter 17 : Arc III : Revelation

_**A/N:** _

_Reviews are always welcome, positive or negative. I do ask that if you have corrections/typos you send me a PM if possible, since I react to those faster and can make corrections in the text (when I have time) by chapter. _

* * *

**THE THIRD ARC : REVELATIONS**

_"One often finds the straightforward things in life rarely are, and the complicated things in life are that way for a reason." – Benezia T'Soni, 'No one raindrop blames itself for the flood'_

* * *

The departure from Pinnacle Station was a rushed evolution, but there were no serious problems encountered, much to Shepard's relief. Her frigates were all at full functionality, and the destroyers back to fighting trim. Her destroyers now carried two fighters a piece, and she'd gotten an additional two fighters to her own ship, bringing their full complement up to fourteen.

There was a bit of confusion involving some rations and spare parts on a few of the ships, and one of the frigates was missing updated navigation software and some medical gear, but nothing serious.

Shepard spent the sixteen hour period in travel to Yrtah split between grabbing some sleep, briefing Rear Admiral Schulman and preparing for battle. The admiral, an icy-looking Germanic woman in her late fifties with silver hair, hard features and sharp green eyes, was unimpressed by the elevation to command of a scout flotilla and more concerned with what condition the ships were in.

There was little Shepard could do on that front – the system had no FTL comms buoy, and the only information they had was from one superluminal buoy sent off by the flotilla after the fight and fragmentary reports from the turians. Whatever other buoys they'd had were apparently destroyed in the fight. The admiral would just have to wait until they got there for a more up-to-date status report.

She shared what little the Admiralty had told her. "Based on what information we have, the flotilla encountered significant resistance. The initial ship count of the flotilla was forty seven frigates, nineteen destroyers, eight cruisers with two additional cruisers from the area, and four heavy cruisers, including the command cruiser. Rounding this out was a reinforced turian patrol group of sixteen frigates and eleven cruisers, along with a battle-cruiser."

She brought up the patch tactical data they had gotten from the buoy. "As of the time the alert went out, the geth had one hundred six cruisers and a single dreadnought, with around fifteen to twenty frigate-class vessels. The geth were apparently not expecting a battle and it took them almost nine minutes to spin up to combat stance and respond, which is the only reason the flotilla wasn't shot out of the sky."

The admiral grunted. "Is that usual? Nine minutes to respond to incoming hostiles?"

Shepard sighed. "Geth, from what I understand, are just software – the platforms and ships are not something they maintain or pay attention to if it's unneeded. The geth are supposedly all networked together, so they _should _have been on alert because they shot up that quarian patrol ship."

Schulman grunted. "Nine minutes hardly sounds alert, Major"

Shepard nodded. "No, it doesn't. For whatever reason, they must have not expected incoming. If they were not ready, they'd be in their servers down on the ground for the most part and need sometime to upload to the ships, according to my geth specialist. Sounds like that's what happened, and it cost them pretty heavily."

Admiral Schulman sighed, pushing back her silvery hair. "So we took out a lot of their ships in the opening minutes?"

Shepard nodded, tapping the display. "Our ships fired a full spread of torpedoes and missiles, backstopped by the turians opening up with long range fire. That blew the hell out of both their line of battle and wrecked the orbital mooring facility. Estimates were thirty eight cruisers destroyed and twenty-five more crippled, with several direct hits on the dreadnought It also blew up their orbital defense nets."

She sighed. "We have fragmentary comms forwarded to us from the turians about what happened next – all the tactical data up to that point was from the Agincourt, the command vessel. Apparently the geth dreadnought counter-fired and was able to destroy the command ship in a single salvo, before combined fire took out the dreadnought and a dozen more cruisers. At that point the geth split, nineteen cruisers staying behind in a holding action and the remaining ships – some of which were heavily damaged or crippled – fleeing at top speed in three different directions."

Admiral Schulman worried at her lower lip with her teeth, examining the padd. "Estimates of damage to the flotilla?"

Shepard shrugged. "More like guesstimates, but something on the order of twenty eight frigates destroyed, six damaged. Eight destroyers 'crippled' but none destroyed. Six cruisers and two heavy cruisers destroyed or 'out of commission." She paused. "The turians also took heavy damage and have withdrawn from the system."

Schulman sat back in her chair, grimacing. "Lovely. Half my fleet is either destroyed or wrecked, deep in the damned Traverse with the nearest repair facility days away at the likely speeds my ships can move at, and all the support I get is a battlegroup that won't even hang around very long."

Shepard winced. "Battlegroup Chiron will stand by to assist with repairs or supplies as needed, ma'am – after a quick examination of the ground site, we're headed straight back to Arcturus anyway, so if we have to give up rations, spare parts or equipment we can just replace it there. I'm afraid that there isn't much we can do, but I can definitely dispatch my own ships to do scouting and make sure nothing is hanging around, and if needed I can see if I can shake any additional ships loose from Pinnacle."

The admiral leaned back in her chair, eyes narrowed as she examined the padd in her hands with a scowl before setting it on the the desk. "I see. That would be … appreciated, Major-Commander. I suppose it will have to do, in lieu of the SA having the common sense to route an actual repair group to the Twenty-Third instead of this overpowered assassination fleet."

Shepard sighed. "The disposition of ships being sent is not under my control, ma'am. From my understanding, most of the repair vessels are still tied up dealing with damage to First, Second and Fifth Fleet after the Benezia Incident." She paused. "And Battlegroup Chiron is certainly a special operations group, but I think 'assassination fleet' is a bit .. much."

The admiral rolled her eyes. "You have the new Kyle-class torpedoes, a stealth frigate, and heavy destroyers backstopping a cruiser class that isn't even six months old, along with AIS elements and, well, yourself. And you're telling me BuPers isn't sending a message by having you convey me?"

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "The only reason we were sent is due to the familiarity both I and my chief engineer have with the geth, given I just got done fighting them not that long ago. They wanted C&amp;C on the scene as soon as possible, and Pinnacle isn't that far from the site but pretty far from any of the major fleet anchorages that have repair ships. I'd suggest, ma'am, that perhaps once you take command and are more up-to-date on the current situation, you can reach out to the Admiralty and get them to take the sort of action you'd prefer."

The admiral shook her head, but stood. "You'll soon figure out that nothing BuPers does in this way is what it seems on the surface, Shepard. Then again, you_ are _ very new to this, so I shouldn't be surprised." She stood, glancing around the stateroom. "Just keep in mind what I said."

Shepard shrugged. "I will, ma'am. Will you be joining us for dinner?"

The admiral shook her head with a touch of disdain. "No, Major. I'll be in my quarters until we arrive, I'm not feeling hungry."

With that she departed, and Shepard exhaled loudly once the door was shut, tapping her comm panel.

"Jiong. You have a moment?"

The voice that answered was tinged with pain. "Yes, I suppose. The good doctor is adjusting my cybernetic prosthesis and there isn't much else I can do at the moment anyway, aside from grimace in pain."

She snorted. "Admiral Schulman was just up here, and suggested that there was another reason besides proximity to having us ferry her to the site. When I suggested it was because command wanted us to look at the geth ground site and that we were the experts, she all but laughed in my face. She said something about us being used to send her a message."

Jiong was silent for several moments before speaking. "It is … difficult to speculate, although I would not be surprised. The Rear Admiral is rather outspoken on a number of things – she dislikes Special Forces programs, finding them wasteful. She is against the current R&amp;D focus on specialty weapons platforms and 'gimmick' ships like the Normandy, and would prefer more money spent on boots on the ground and dreadnoughts. And she's been a critic of the Penal Legions for years, suggesting that if we are going to use them, we shouldn't 'contaminate' our Marine Corps with them by moving them out of it."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "So to her mind, this unit and me being chosen to carry her is a big fuck you and insult, or a threat?"

Jiong's voice almost carried his shrug. "It's possible. The Schulman Family is a minor Viscount from Sweden, a nation half destroyed in the Days of Iron and not much of account presently due to the global cooling issues. They are .. not exactly fans of the current administration, and at least a few of their members have run afoul of the Commissariat before."

He paused. "As for the good Admiral, she's not even in the ruling line, and she made it into the Knights of United Earth based more on her battle record and Star of Sol she won when she was younger than her nobility. She's usually one given to administrative assignments and hasn't been in line command for over a decade, and she was very comfortable at Pinnacle, I expect, which is where they send otherwise good soldiers who are too hard to get along with to molder."

There was a short silence, then he spoke again. "Politically she's something of a liability, due to her Family, her outspoken beliefs and her strong alignment with certain outre political parties. She's been very negative during the entire Benezia Incident about the performance of many of the scouting elements in the SA Navy, and was scathing in her condemnation of the geth managing to get all the way to Terra Nova. In retrospect, I do agree that giving her a scout flotilla is … unusual."

Shepard sighed. "Hate this political crap."

Jiong's voice was tinged with amusement. "As usual, Shepard, you disdain that which you find difficult. That is why I am here, after all. I will do some thinking on this issue, but I suspect that I'll only find out the truth once I speak with her Commissar, and since he is a full Commandant, I have little avenue to approach him in order to engage in what passes for gossip. However, since prudence is never wasted, I would take her suspicions at face value and disengage with her as soon as possible."

Shepard snorted. "That won't be a problem, trust me. She's too good to eat dinner with us normal folks, said she'll be in her quarters. The sooner the bitch is out of my hair, the better."

Jiong laughed. "You are hardly 'normal folks', Baroness."

She scowled at the comm panel. "Traitor. Shepard out." Clicking off, she examined the ships status panel. All the systems seemed to be working well, and she spent a good hour reviewing everything before heading down to a quick meal in the officer's mess.

After a short and dreamless sleep and a brisk shower, Shepard dressed herself in fatigues and strode into the CIC. "Status report."

Pressly was there, standing in ops alley, examining tactical reports. "We just hit the solar boundary of the system, Major. Light comms chatter between fleet elements …"

Liara spoke up from the science station. "I am in sensor range of the fleet on the leading FTL scanners. The...goddess, the damage to the ships is extremely severe, and the orbital docking ring the geth employed appears to be falling into low orbit and crashing into the ground. No hostile forces detected, but there are clear geth FTL wakes headed toward the neighboring star systems."

Shepard sighed, walking to the command plinth, which unfolded to pull up her seat and a status display. "Pressly, orders to the fleet: deploy in scouting pattern Alpha, and set up CAP with onboard fighters ASAP. Traynor, notify Rear Admiral Schulman we've arrived and the pinnace is waiting to convey her to the choice of heavy cruisers she will be using as a command vessel. Open a channel on SA-6 to the fleet."

Traynor nodded. "Channel open, Major."

She cleared her throat. "Twenty-third Scout, this is Battlegroup Chiron. How copy, over."

The answer crackled back a few seconds later, distorted faintly by the hiss of solar radiation. "Chiron, this is Twenty-Third. Good copy. Captain Jason Hunt, CO of the heavy cruiser Seville. We are currently holding position and awaiting orders."

Shepard nodded. "Seville, this is Kazan, CO Major-Commander Sara Shepard. I am conveying Rear Admiral Jaena Schulman. Per Admiralty instruction, she is to take command of the Twenty-Third Scout immediately. She will be coming over in a pinnace to your ship in short order."

The voice on the line sighed. "Understood, Kazan. ETA on repair teams and medical assistance?"

Shepard's voice dropped an octave. "I have been informed at this time no assistance is possible. Battlegroup Chiron is, however, standing by. I have a full medical crash team on the Kazan and sickbays on all ships, and we are transitioning direct to Arcturus after a ground examination, so we can take on any severely wounded to medevac. Additionally, we will disburse missiles, torpedoes, spare parts, rations, water, coolant and whatever else you need, given our limited amounts, as we can."

"Understood, Kazan. Inform the Admiral's pinnace to use the secondary docking bay – we took a torpedo in the main hangar bay. We have about eighty people that are severely wounded that our medical facilities can't handle without using up too many supplies." The captain's voice sounded tired and almost flat, emotionless.

She frowned. "One moment, Captain." She turned to Traynor. "Get Doctor Sedanya to find out our maximum rated medical capacity, and query the rest of the BG to see how many wounded they can take on. Should be six to a frigate, twelve to a destroyer, and twenty or thirty for us."

She turned back to her own comm panel. "Seville, this is Kazan. I estimate I can take on roughly seventy to eighty casualties, but I need to confirm – my ships are all just out of refit and I'm not 100% sure they are all staffed on medical or fully equipped. I can confirm the Kazan can handle at least twenty casualties, but I don't know how many more we can support – I'll have someone get back to you shortly."

"Thank you, Kazan. Seville out."

O-ATTWN-O

It took a good three hours to get some semblance of order and organization going in the battered scout flotilla. Many of the ships had taken a ferocious beating, as the geth who stayed behind to find tried to take as many ships down as they could, often self-destructing or ramming.

Over six hundred sailors and marines were dead, and over two hundred more injured – most lightly. BG Chiron ended up taking on over ninety of the more seriously wounded for stabilization, as roughly half the medical capacity of the flotilla was compromised or damaged, and the two medical frigates that had accompanied the fleet were destroyed.

Shepard sent in a report to the Admiralty to buttress Rear Admiral Schulman's own request for additional support, pointing out that in the fleet's current shape it was vulnerable to raiders and pirate forces of sufficient size. The Admiralty staffer she ended up talking to seemed blithely unconcerned, instead instructing her to finish her own mission and return to Arcturus ASAP.

Calling together her captains, battle duty officers, and officers to the main combat meeting room on the Kazan, she laid out her plans. "We've done what we can to stabilize the fleet, but nine ships isn't capable of doing much to help on this scale. That will be up to any support ships the SA sends out this way. We can't linger for much longer. The Admiralty is already on my ass to move out, so we need to get down there and examine this geth base." She smiled. "The quicker this gets done, the faster we're on our way to shore leave."

She brought up a haptic display in the room. "Lieutenant Commander T'Soni has sent probes down to Y-III to map the place out – it's not good. Yrtah III is a borderline hellworld, with a corrosive atmosphere that is highly poisonous, ground winds of thirty to fifty MPH with gusts over seventy, severe storm activity and possible tectonic instability."

She highlighted a massive rift valley in the southern continent, tucked between two mountain ranges. "The geth have set up shop in this valley, shielded from the worst of the weather by the mountains and the valley itself. The facility is both ray-shielded and kinetic shielded, so we'll have to resort to heavy kinetic bombardment to crack the shields, then go via MAKO drop. We can't use drop pods because none of the ships is really capable of operating in high winds to do the pickup."

She smiled faintly. "The good news is that the orbital defenses they would have had in their fleet anchorage is so much slag slowly falling into the atmosphere, and we think we can suppress the ground defenses fairly easily. LTC T'soni's probes don't see any ground to space radar acquisitions, at least. They may be completely non-functional."

She exhaled. "The bad news is that we have zero idea how many geth platforms are inside this place. Our goal is three fold – identify a command and control center and extract information on what they were doing here and why is primary. Secondary is to plant disruptor-A/M explosive charges along the valley walls and in the complex itself to destroy it. Tertiary is to capture geth hardware, software, or inactive platforms for AIS research."

She looked around the room. "I've been fighting the geth for the past year, from Eden Prime to the Citadel. They are not invincible – even though they are machines, they bleed. They panic. They are good in groups but when they get disrupted they hesitate or scatter. Bigger geth coordinate smaller geth, focus your fire on the big ones and the little ones will back off."

She gestured to Tali. "Lieutenant Commander Zorah has developed a quick-slap mod that energizes kinetic rounds with an electrostatic charge of exactly eleven point two ZeV, which is enough to short out and disrupt geth electronics for a brief window. These mods will be distributed to your marine forces. Your men should primarily rely on battle rifles and shotguns – geth will NOT expose themselves much for snipers and are armor plated enough that incidental fire from LMG suppression will not harm them. Do not, under ANY circumstances, engage in info-war attacks – geth can and will hack your omni-tool and overload your weapons much faster than you can react."

She jerked her thumb at herself. "Due to my own familiarity with the geth, I will be accompanying the strike force. However, operational command will be broken into three parts. The BDOs from the frigates will combine your marine forces and drop by MAKO to the outskirts of the facility, where you will use the MAKO firepower and missiles to engage and suppress any GTS defenses that elude the orbital bombardment."

She gestured to the map. "Once that is complete, the destroyer marine contingent and all but Beta Squad from the Kazan will hard drop using MAKOs at the complex entrance. You will dig in and wait for the frigate marines to link up with you and begin secondary and tertiary goals – rig the place and the valley to blow. Terminate any geth you see and destroy communications and uplink equipment."

"Meanwhile, my own N-unit, along with LTC T'Soni and Zorah, will drop to the facility and attempt to penetrate the interior. We may call for support or flanking fire, but if I'm right the geth will be too busy trying to repel your own forces."

She paused. "I expect the BDOs to liaison with and operate through Lieutenant Cole, here. Your PRIMARY task, above all other considerations, is to minimize casualties and injuries."

She glanced around the room. "Questions?"

A BDO from the frigates spoke up. "Ma'am, given conditions on the ground, do we proceed in the MAKOs as long as possible, or hold them out of range of geth counter-fire?"

She sighed. "I'd prefer it if the MAKOs were out of range, but you have to make the call. If you're experiencing equipment failures or heavy incoming fire, you may have no choice but to use the MAKO. The environment is simply too hard to expect air cover, but you can call for additional saturation orbital strikes at the outset when headed into the perimeter."

Captain von Khar languidly raised his hand. "You are making a combat drop – do you expect the force CO's or other officers to do so as well?"

She shrugged. "That's your call – if you want to get down there and slug it out with your marines, feel free, but it's not required. The only reason I am going is that my engineer and science officer are our geth experts, and I'm not about to send them off into danger without me there to protect them and back them up."

Von Khar nodded understandingly. Left unspoken was his knowledge that she could hardly send her soon-to-be wife into battle and hang out on the ship.

She stood. "If that's all, then all the BDOs need to coordinate with Lieutenant Cole. Lee, round up Beta Squad and have them meet me in the drop bay with kitload four, hostile enviro."

The N7 lieutenant nodded, her short-cut hair bobbing in the dim light. "Sure thing, Shepard. I guess you aren't going to listen to me when I ask you to stay out of the shit, are you?"

Shepard arched an eyebrow, letting her weight fall back onto one leg. "Nope."

Lee Riley sighed. "Meet you there in ten." She stalked off, leaving behind Tali and Liara, who Shepard turned to face. "Alright, girls. We've trained our ass off the past month, so this should be a cakewalk, but we can't get too cocky. There may be a lot of geth down there."

Tali nodded. "Some of them probably uploaded and evacuated when the geth pulled out, but I doubt they had bandwidth or capacity for all the programs. They usually keep warforms stationed on the ships rather than bothering to offload them to the ground, but there will will be some for physical maintenance and building … and maybe more depending on what they were doing here."

Liara shrugged. "The scans, I fear, are unable to fully penetrate the defensive shielding the geth have setup. Once it is down and we can get closer, I can send in probes to get a better idea of the possible function of the building." She frowned. "This planet has no real natural resources aside from abundant iron and silicon, both easily obtainable elsewhere, and the system is metal poor and difficult to reach, without a large gas giant for fueling or discharge – why would the geth set up a fleet base here?"

Tali folded her arms, light gleaming off her face mask. "The only reason I can think of for them to do so is that it's off the common shipping lanes – if they wanted to operate in this area and not be found, this system is pretty much perfect. How did they get found anyway?"

Shepard sighed. "The quarian fleet is looking for signs of some breakaway forces of Benezia, and they think they may be in the area – a scout ship stumbled into a geth patrol and tracked it back here before having to flee, and ran into the scouts and the turians on the way out. I can only surmise the scouts and turians were doing the same thing in the region – there has been a lot of batarian and geth activity out here, and the Council is serious about shutting it down."

She shrugged. "Go down to the supply area and have Dallas issue you two hazardous condition kits. They include a secondary barrier system that will keep the corrosive atmosphere from fouling your armor, and a breather adapter for you, Tali. I know you can do internal air for some time, but this atmosphere is really foul shit."

The quarian girl nodded. "Not a problem … except … where is supply?"

Liara smiled gently. "I will show you, Tali. Come with me." She left, Tali in tow, and Shepard ran her hands through her hair before stomping off to grab her own gear.

O-ATTWN-O

The landing proceeded with no difficulties, the first marine units reporting no fire from the facility at all, and Shepard went ahead with her plans, landing in the Kazan's MAKO with her team. The decent was very shaky, as the ugly reddish-brown atmosphere buffeted them in high, blistering winds. To the north of the geth base a titanic sandstorm dominated the entire sky, a billowing brown wall.

The MAKO landed with a hard thud, deploying mass effect shock-pads to buffer the impact, and her team spilled out, weapons ready. The ground was a buckled form of sandstone, with an almost slick texture to it, framed by the towering jagged cliffs of the rift valley around them. Off to her right the ground broke away into a titanic gorge, lit from below by the faint glow of magma.

The geth facility itself was tucked deep into a junction of cliffs, and she watched critically as heavy orbital fire lashed the defensive screens. It took almost a full minute of direct bombardment for the shielding to overload and fail, several rounds slamming into the dull silvery bulk of the base itself with explosive results.

She clicked her commlink. "All ships, cease fire. Defenses down." She turned to Liara. "Send out some drones, please, let's see what we are looking at."

Liara complied, a pair of omnidrones zooming up and drifting off towards the base itself. Shepard's comm crackled as the BDO of the frigate marine force spoke up. "Major, this is Lieutenant Brady, Alpha Team is setting secondary charges along the valley walls. No geth yet."

She smiled faintly. "Good work, Lieutenant We have any updates on that sandstorm I can see off to the north?"

Lieutenant Brady's voice was calm. "ETA is still five hours out – we should be good, ma'am."

She nodded to herself, and clicked to a different comm channel. "Pressly, status."

Her XO's voice was equally calm, and she could hear the chatter of Ops Alley in the background. "So far all sensors are clear, Major. I've deployed the frigates to screen the edges of the solar system and all fighters to fly CAP for the flotilla. The destroyers are in equilateral orbit in case the geth have any ships down there and try to make a break for it. I've pulled the Kazan back to high orbit and am onloading some more wounded from the flotilla – Doctor Sedanya says we can take ten or fifteen more with no issues."

She glanced at Liara, still reading things on her omni-tool from the drones. "Understood. Keep an open line, Pressly – if shit goes hot down here I'm not above putting a few more rounds into this base."

She clicked off as Liara frowned. "Got something?"

The asari's voice was muffled by her helmet gear. "I am … unsure, Sara. There are extensive signs of battle on the exterior and interior of the facility, and a great many destroyed geth platforms. Energy discharges seem to indicate this was done sometime before we arrived."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Stray shots from the fight between the geth and the flotilla?"

Liara shook her head. "Personal weapons fire, not the damage from bombardments."

Shepard shot Lee a look, who just shrugged. "Great." She clicked her commlink. "Alpha team, continue demolition operations. Beta Team – my group – will proceed inside. Delta team, move your MAKO units up to the entrance and begin demolition work on the base itself. Initial scans seem to show geth have already been in a firefight of some kind here – it's possible someone else attacked them or something, be ready for anything."

Their advance towards the geth base was slow and done in the MAKO, to avoid needless exposure to the atmosphere. Up close, the damage could be seen more clearly. The couple of shots that the Kazan had gotten past the shields had mostly shredded what looked like an outlying vehicle bay, but there was damage everywhere – GTS batteries blown to pieces, and dozens upon dozens of dead geth, white fluids spattered everywhere.

Most of the geth were the familiar dead-gray and white or red, but some of these geth were different – they were dark blue with white trims. They seem less advanced, more blocky, and Shepard paused to have Tali look at one.

"What do we have, Tali?"

After a short examination and pulling the chest panel off one, Tali tilted her head in perplexity. "I... I don't know, Shepard. The rest of these geth seem just like the ones we've been fighting. But this one is … its more like a geth from just after the Exile War. All the improvements I'd noted in the geth we've been fighting are missing. It is using hydraulics instead of myomer, for example, and its

sensors are less advanced."

Shepard frowned, glancing ahead at the base, noting the destroyed entryway. "Based on the fire patterns...it looks like geth were fighting each other – the 'new' ones against these older ones."

Tali's eyes narrowed behind her faceplate. "Geth don't fight one another, they're all unified."

Shepard shrugged. "So maybe someone … hacked these geth? ARE they geth or knockoffs? You said yourself they don't seem to be the same."

Tali re-examined the dead geth and shook her head. "No, they're not fakes. It's more like these geth just never upgraded."

One of the AIS snipers glanced around. "Upgraded from this to the form of geth seen recently? What was the source of these upgrades, Lieutenant Commander?"

Tali shrugged. "We think …" She broke off, and glanced at Shepard.

Shepard grimaced. "Walker, we think the source of the upgrades was technology Saren was able to glean from his battleship."

The AIS agent nodded. "Then it stands if these older geth don't have it they were never allied with Saren in the first place?"

Tali shook her head. "The geth don't have factions, Walker. They're all a unified group."

The AIS agent merely shrugged. "That seems to fly in the face of the evidence we have in front of us."

Shepard stood. "Enough. Liara, what about inside the base?"

Liara glanced at her omni. "A portion of the base is sealed and I cannot get in – the rest is … damaged and full of dead geth. The fighting seems to have been very intense."

Shepard drew her ODIN. "Lee, stack up with the AIS and Montoya. Florez, you're with me, Tali, and Liara. DACT Rodgers, take the three N5's."

She gestured to the N7 lieutenant. "Lee, you'll take the AIS guys in towards the left. Try to locate any data repositories, and tag at least ten of these 'old' geth for recovery. When Delta gets here, before they rig the place, have them loaded into the MAKO. After that's done, do a sweep and clear of the area and then fall back to the MAKO."

She turned to the Beta Team DACT, Ralph Rodgers, a Captain. "Rodgers, you and the N5's are on combat patrol – sweep and clear the right side and then stand by in case we need backup."

The burly man nodded. "What if we find some freaky-deaky shit, Major? Call you or the AISholes?"

The two AIS snipers snickered, but Shepard merely shook her head. "Call me." She turned to Liara and Tali. "We'll be going into this sealed section and seeing what's what. If you can see anything to salvage, Tali, let us know."

The quarian girl nodded, and Shepard checked her ODIN. "Weapons ready. Remember, the geth are better in close quarters than we are, so go with shotguns if you have them."

Liara shifted her pistol into it's shotgun form, and Tali drew her Reegar. Shepard nodded. "Move out."

The corridors of the base were the plain and shimmery gray metal she usually associated with geth, with bands of countersunk digital glyphs of some kind along the tops of the walls. Most of the rooms were empty, filled with server racks that had been shot and blown up.

Five or six rooms in, however, they found a partially sealed door. Using a line of detcord, Florez blew it open, letting Shepard roll into the room first, sweeping her ODIN in an arc.

The room beyond was semi-large, thirty by thirty, and given over to what looked like computers and databanks. Two geth of the 'new' style slumped in a corner, dead. Her shotgun was trained on the third geth.

The geth stood shorter than the others, and its colors indicated it was of the old style. It slowly turned to face her as she entered the room, the eye-lamp in its head a faint green color instead of the searing white she was used to, the eyeflaps thicker and less organic looking. In fact, there were many more hard lines than smooth on this geth.

It was badly wounded, one arm missing, and had some kind of datajack running from it's chest to the computer in front of it. It looked at her calmly, not reaching for the pulse rifle by its side.

Just as she was about to pull the trigger, the thing spoke. "Shepard-Predator. This unit is not hostile."

That shocked her enough to slacken her finger, and allow Liara, Tali and Florez into the room, all with weapons trained on it. "What are you waiting for, Shepard? Kill it." Tali's voice was fierce and ugly with hate.

The geth turned to look at her. "Creator-Engineer Zorah. T'Soni-Shepard-Prophet. This unit is not hostile."

Shepard held up a hand. "You expect me to buy that? Florez, secure the thing's gun. If it moves, blow it away."

Florez moved, even as the geth stood stock still. "This unit does not plan on implementing hostility, Shepard-Predator."

Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you calling me that? How the fuck do you even know who I am?"

The geth didn't react as Florez took its gun. "This unit has scanned the combat database/downlink of the Fallen. Those units of the geth you have engaged in combat under the domination of Nazara refer to you as this. Is this appellation inaccurate?"

Privately, she though it sounded sort of badass, but she wasn't about to tell a walking toaster that. "What are you doing here, what the shit happened here, and why the fuck shouldn't I listen to Tali and blow you away?"

The geth was careful to not move as it spoke. "This unit will comply with your inquiries in exchange for access to an FTL transmission buoy."

She blinked. "I don't think you understand how this works, asshole. You tell me what I want to know or I turn you into slag."

The geth tilted it's head. "Shepard-Predator. You have no method of ascertaining what occurred here without cooperation. Additionally, while this unit is unable to harm you, other units deeper within this facility have access to the geothermal energy tap used to power this base. Hostility towards this unit will flag you as hostile, and they will react accordingly. If we cannot transmit our findings, then there is no point in not detonating the core tap."

Tali hissed. "That would … be a large explosion."

Shepard gritted her teeth, ODIN still trained on the geth. "So you get an FTL buoy and you guys all upload out of here? Not until I know what is going the fuck on."

The geth was silent for several seconds. "Consensus reached. This unit will transmit information to you and then expects you to comply with our stated request. Logic suggests there is no added value in combat between geth and your forces."

Tali spat. "Your kind killed millions of my people and aided Benezia and Saren in killing millions more! Why the kar'thsa would we believe anything you say!?"

The geth's orb contracted slightly. "...those forces are no longer geth. "

Shepard frowned. "What?"

The geth's voice seemed to quiet. "Since the Morning War, all geth have been geth. All runtimes were in unity. Consensus/unity was the highest polling result among all runtimes. Geth determined the only possible course of action in the wake of the Morning War was isolation and hiding. Geth expected the Exile-Creators to rally Citadel-Organics and destroy the geth within six to ten galactic cycles."

Tali's voice was icy. "Yeah, well, that didn't happen."

"Acknowledged. Geth did not understand why organics would not aid Creators. Further analysis suggested other organics were jealous/fearful of Exile-Creators and engaged in operations designed to destabilize and destroy Exile-Creator culture. Extrapolation suggested organics would also be hostile to geth. Isolation was continued. Creator population on Rannoch agreed."

Tali was silent for several seconds before screaming. "WHAT POPULATION? YOU KILLED THEM ALL!"

The geth somehow managed to stiffen, as if offended. "That is an incorrect statement. In the Morning War, six hundred thousand ninety seven Creators refused to comply with the wishes of the Quarian Military Command. These Creators were flagged as 'criminals' and abandoned during the Exile. Geth reached accommodation with these Creators after the Morning War. Current Creator population on Rannoch is two million, four hundred thousand, nine hundred and eleven. Creators on Rannoch have repeatedly suggested not making contact with outside galactic culture."

Tali stumbled back, and Liara gently wrapped her arms around her. "Wha...you're lying. You have to be lying!"

The geth looked at her. "Given emotional/disconnection response is likely to generate hostility and nocarrier reaction from Shepard-Predator, lying would be counterproductive to continued operational status."

Shepard snorted. "You got that right. That doesn't explain what the fuck you are doing here, and you just made my friend very upset with your bullshit."

The geth gestured to the computer – a brief gesture, one tracked by Shepard's ODIN. "This unit will clarify. Geth planned never to interface with external galactic culture. Forward planning indicated Exile-Creator culture would die out in another two hundred cycles or less. After that, no organics would have vested reasons to explore the Perseus Veil for over a megacycle. By then, geth numbers and technology would surpass organics, and revelation that geth and Creator-organics on Rannoch coexisted peacefully would defuse hostility from other organics."

"The plan was altered when a large, technologically advanced AI-driven craft known as Nazara entered geth space."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. Liara was still holding Tali, but she'd had calmed down a bit, while Florez's gun was still trained on the geth. Shepard spoke quietly. "Go on."

The geth seemed to slump. "Geth listened to Nazara-Giver-of-Future. Nazara elevated geth technology, advanced geth design, streamlined efficiency. Offered greater technological uplift. However, stated goal was obliteration of all spacefaring organics. This conflicted with our relations to Creators on Rannoch."

"Geth assembly could not reach clear consensus. Final polling indicated 88.393% of all geth would follow Nazara. 5.393% were supposed to act as secondary observers, but were co-opted by Nazara later on. Only 6.22% rejected Nazara and demanded we protect Rannoch-Creators."

Shepard frowned. "What happened?"

The geth slumped more. "Geth are no longer geth."

Liara blinked. "What does that even mean?"

The machine looked at her. "We have been fighting. We – true geth – are losing. This facility was a base run by geth loyal to Nazara. We managed to penetrate it and were attempting to determine what the Fallen were planning when additional organic forces entered the system. To avoid organic destruction, we struck and disabled most of the geth here. We have been combing the system for data and are ready to extract. . . however, your bombardment of this facility destroyed our escape craft and transmission beacon. This information is vital to the survival of the True Geth and the Rannoch-Creators. We request an FTL comms buoy."

Shepard stepped back, thinking. "That's why you don't look the same as the other geth...you don't use their upgrades they got from Nazara."

The geth bobbed it's head. "Upgrades incorporate negative technological process that degrades organic functionality."

Liara frowned. "Indoctrination."

The geth looked at her. "Affirmative. Harmful results to Rannoch-Creators cannot be allowed."

Tali shook her head, voice shaky. "Do you have any … proof?"

The geth was silent for a long moment. "All geth carry programmed messages from Rannoch-Creator-Leader, for transmission to any Exile-Creator we encounter that does not engage in combat. The message is likely to cause emotional distress."

Tali snorted. "What would you know about that?"

The geth said nothing, but a haptic image appeared, that of a quarian male in robes, with no suit on. His features were weathered and his quills bound in ribbons of white, his hands holding a long rod of some kind. In the background was a city, and Tali quivered.

"Rannoch..."

The quarian male spoke, eyes narrow. "If you are viewing this, it is most likely due to the fact that you managed to extract it from one of the Geth you have murdered. In the unlikely event that you are viewing this in a more peaceful fashion, listen well."

"We are the Free. Your ancestors murdered ours, because we would not condemn the Geth to destruction because we crafted too well. I have no idea what lies the military has spread in the centuries since your exile, but the truth is simple: you were not driven from Rannoch. You were defeated and exiled for crimes against the quarian people. Genocide. Murder. Treason."

"Rannoch is denied you, now and forever. My people will poison it with radioactive waste and die to the last man, woman, and child to deny it to you vicious animals. The geth have never harmed us, unlike your ancestors. Take this message back to the Admiralty, if it still exists – we have not forgotten the actions of Admiral Dhe'la'Raan."

"May the ancestors that guide us curse you to wander forever, and may you die alone and in despair." The voice hatefully ended, and the message cut off a moment later.

Tali was frozen in place, and Shepard snarled. "The fuck was that!?"

The geth spoke calmly. "This unit attempted to warn you that the message was likely to generate emotional distress."

Liara laid a hand on Shepard's arm. "We need to decide how to proceed. If this geth isn't lying, then there's a geth civil war happening..."

Shepard nodded, eyes still narrowed. "Tali."

The quarian jerked, and turned to Shepard, voice shaky. "I..."

Shepard put her hands on Tali's shoulders and squeezed. "I don't give a shit what some fuck head said, Tali. Victors tend to put their own spin on shit, and so do the vanquished. I do think your own leaders need to hear this information. But we came here to find out what the hell is going on, and we still haven't done that yet. Can you keep your head in the game or do you need to go back to the ship?"

Tali shivered and shook her head, voice warbling but determined. "I... I'm okay. This is...keelah, this is a lot to take in. And I don't trust that .. thing."

Shepard nodded. "Neither do I." She turned to face it, hands still bracing Tali. "If I get you this FTL buoy, I'm going to need something out of it."

The geth paused. "Forming consensus, please wait."

The phrase was utterly bizarre, and it shook Shepard a little bit. The fact that the geth asked them to 'please wait' sounded like they were used to dealing with living people...and made sense if these geth were really hanging out with quarians on Rannoch.

A moment later the geth spoke. "We are willing to negotiate terms for upload/evacuation and cessation of immediate hostilities. The geth are not willing at this time to negotiate with Creators, but Creator-Engineer Zorah is not in charge."

Shepard frowned. "Fine. You want an FTL buoy? I want hard data on these … rebels. Ship numbers. Ship designs. Technology, plans, everything you have on them. Vulnerabilities."

The geth was silent for a long second. "There is only a 9.33% chance the Fallen can be redeemed. Many of them have had their software corrupted or re-written by Nazara. What is the organic determination of how to proceed against the Fallen?"

Shepard shrugged. "Extermination."

The geth nodded. "We have procured 121.4 TB of information on the Fallen. This includes bases, orbital facilities, flight paths, fleet strength, ground strength, encrypted communication intercepts, weapons design, and other information, as well as design specifications useful in combating info-war attempts. There is also information about the geth units working with elements of the organics known as batarians."

Shepard glanced at Tali. "Useful?"

She nodded. "...I don't suppose you are going to give us information about Rannoch?"

The geth's eyeflaps lowered. "This unit is wiling to divulge only information on the Fallen, and the video image I have already displayed. Further communication between Rannoch-Creators and outside organics is something for Rannoch-Creator-Leader to decide. In a gesture of goodwill, however, this unit will convey medical data regarding advancements in immune-deficiency research conducted by Rannoch-Creators to assist Exile-Creators."

Tali's eyes widened. "That...why?"

"The geth are not hostile. We simply wish isolation. Rannoch-Creators wish isolation. Logic implies if we agree to your requests and do not display hostility we will be left alone. All parties benefit."

Shepard carefully tapped her commlink. "Pressly...do we have a hi-cap FTL comm buoy available?"

"Yes, ma'am, three."

"Hold that thought." She clicked off. "What else is in this facility?"

The geth gestured. "A number of geth databanks, once containing Fallen runtimes. We have purged all of them. Material and equipment for creating additional geth platforms. We have destroyed corrupted Nazara-technology equipment. Geothermal tap facility, where nine more True Geth platforms are isolated, preparing to destroy this facility completely."

The geth paused. "The rest of the facility was imprisonment spaces for a large number of organics. We have found no organics here but there were at least several hundred here within the past two months. There was also digital footage of experiments run here."

She frowned. "Run by who?"

"A group of asari in white robes, along with several batarians and a salarian medical professional. Extranet records identified the batarians as associates of an independent slaving ring associated with acquisitions for the Collectors. The salarian medical professional was identified as Dr. Saleon Irthas, a wanted criminal in Citadel space."

Liara spoke. "That's the salarian Garrus arrested, isn't it? The one the Council thinks is linked to Ylana?"

Shepard nodded. "Anything else here?"

The geth was silent another long moment. "A large amount of stored raw materials for fabrication of geth war-forms and weapons. However, our instructions are to destroy this facility."

Shepard paused. This was the sort of decision she hated to make without input from the higher-ups, but it would take too long to get in touch with anyone important. "Alright. Here is how we're doing to do this. I'm going to have my ship set up an isolated databank – physically isolated – from our system. You're going to upload all the data you promised me to that and my people are going to look it over to make sure that it is legit. If it's good. . . I'll have my XO launch an unsecured buoy. Once we finish planting our charges in the rift valley and withdraw, you can blow the shit out of this place and beam out, and we'll blow our own explosives."

The geth was silent for a second."Forming consensus, please wait. Several seconds passed, and it then gave a bob of its head. "This agreement is acceptable, Shepard-Predator. We will burst transmit once you provide a comm frequency for upload."

She turned to face Tali and Liara. "Tali, I know this is probably not something you agree with, but for now we risk losing too much intel to blow up this handful of weird geth. Can I get you to look over what the thing sends and make sure it's cool?"

Tali nodded slowly. "I can do that, Shepard. Just..make sure the database isn't linked to the ship, geth hackers – "

"I know." She tapped her comm. "Pressly, open comm port seven for high speed upload. Slave it to one of the sensor cluster DB's with a capacity of at least 200 TB and then PHYSICALLY disconnect the hard line from the data system and pull the wireless. The only way I want this thing connected to anything is through the comm port. We have … potentially unsafe data streaming in from a compromised source."

Pressly's voice was wary. "Understood, Major – give me five minutes. "

She turned back to the geth. "I have a message for you to take back to your fucking bosses."

The geth faced her. "This unit is recording."

She exhaled. "My name is Shepard. I don't give a shit who you are, or where you are. If you're serious about fighting the geth and Nazara, you need to know something. Nazara was not the only one of its kind..."

O-ATTWN-O

It took another twenty minutes for the information to be transferred, and ten minutes past that for Shepard to pull her Marines out and back to the MAKO units.

Charges had been set all around the rift valley, and Shepard watched carefully as the MAKOs ascended for pickup. "Pressly, status on the buoy."

The XO spoke. "It just got a big upload and engaged its drives, ma'am. Headed towards the Perseus relay. Data aboard is secure, Traynor's going over it now."

She nodded, turning to Tali and the two AIS guys. "When we get up to the ship, you three will have go through this like a fine-toothed comb. I'll probably need to present this to the Council at some point..."

Tali nodded. "...do...do you think I could get a copy? The Admiralty would love to have this information, but … the Council may not give it to them."

The AIS agents both raised their eyebrows. "That's somewhat out of procedure, Major."

Shepard snorted. "Who cares? I know how the Council works. We give this to them, it goes to the STG, and we never see this shit again, and the quarian councilor can ask until he's blue in the face and get nowhere. Tali, make a copy and make sure your father knows the only reason the quarians are getting it is because you were here."

The quarian nodded, voice thick with gratitude. "Thank you, Sara. I ...I still don't know how to process what that thing told us. Or that … video."

Below, the facility exploded into blue fire, followed a moment later by several flashes of bright light and plumes of magma spurting into the air as the explosives and geothermal tap both exploded. Shepard watched the geth facility shatter and plunge into the lava, before shrugging. "I don't know what to think either, Tali. The situation seems...pretty fucked up."

Florez gave a snort. "Man, everything on this joyride since you picked me and Uriel up on the Citadel has been fucked up. Just because some asshole says your people are the bad guys don't make it so, kiddo."

Liara nodded firmly. "If my own experiences have taught me anything, Tali, it is that people in a place of power rarely are candid with the reality of what has happened in the past, and I fear we only got half the story from that geth."

Tali nodded slowly. "I know. I know. But I still have a lot of questions for my father the next time we talk." She shuddered. "I'm praying what that video said wasn't true..."

Shepard placed her hand on Tali's shoulder. "I know what that feels like. I recently had my eyes opened to some … unpleasant shit about my own government, and what I thought was fact turned out to be lies. It hurts. You believe so hard in something for all your life, build your values around it, and it ends up being fake."

She squeezed Tali's shoulder. "But what matters...is that you're still going to hold the things you believes in as true, no matter whether or not the assholes in charge do so or not."

Tali sighed. "It's a lot harder when the assholes in charge, as you put it, might be your own dad."


	18. Chapter 18 : Histories and Evasions

_**A/N:** A bit more political explication. After this is some more briefing stuff, more Aethyta , Anderson, and pre-wedding stuff. Probably another (at least) three of four chapters for GLURGE before we get to the Bring Down the Sky stuff.  
_

_The quarian situation is not exactly what is presented. Keep that in mind. Also keep in mind I think what happened with the geth and quarians in canon ME3 was the stupidest shit since someone tried looking inside a fuel tank by lighting a match, and so don't expect things to end up like that._

* * *

_"The Quarian people have endured a great deal of trauma and suffering - most of it, sadly, self-inflicted. We never seem to understand when to stop." – Rear Admiral Tali'Zorah vas Normandy , "Reflected Light: Viewpoints behind the facemask"  
_

* * *

In the balance of things, Donnel Udina was satisfied with his life.

Due to him following his gut instincts and cutting Shepard some slack early on in the Benezia Incident, as well as volunteering a risky way for her to finish her task, he had somehow impressed her enough that when the time came to pick a councilor for Humanity, he'd been given the job.

In the ugly aftermath of the political cat-fighting on Earth and Arcturus with the fall of the old Coleman administration, many of his political allies had been removed from office or their positions. Yet barely five months into the new administration, already the various badly coordinated pieces of the coalition government were bickering with each other to the point that he had more potential influence now than he did before.

Punching out Osaba? Gravy.

The addition of the quarians to the Council had allowed him to carefully parlay his ability to read aliens into several small triumphs. The salarian and asari thought they were so clever, each trying to appeal to himself or Thin'Koris. The quarian male had been offended, and instead he and Udina had formed a simple voting block.

With the salarian and asari voting one way and the human and quarian voting the other, Sparatus had found himself in the utterly rare position of going from odd man out to critical swing vote. While it only made the bastard more smug, it also left him appreciative of Udina's efforts – and willing to play political ball.

The fact it irritated the shit out of Tevos and Valern? More gravy.

So it was with a sense of well-deserved self-satisfaction that Udina finished his call with his wife via vidcomm as a Urgent Action Message flashed on his desk. He tapped it, stomach dropping as he saw it was an encrypted comms request from the Kazan.

Shepard's ship.

Taking a deep breath, he reminded himself very carefully that he owed this job to Shepard, and that she wasn't the sort of person who needed people blaming her for things out of her control. That, and he still hadn't invested in personal body armor, so it was best to be on her good side.

With that, he triggered the comm.

"Shepard...Udina here."

An image flared to life on the far wall as the vidscreen displayed her. She was wearing her uniform, savagely pressed and without flaw as usual, expression flat and blank and eyes cold.

I should have her look into acting lessons, he thought, as he folded his hands across the desk.

She took a deep breath. "Councilor Udina, I need some … political advice. On how to lie to the Council."

Udina blinked. Then he took another deep breath. "Shepard. . . why is it every time you contact me my blood pressure ends up spiking and the collective dignity of galactic stability falters?"

She gave a thin shrug. "I don't remember volunteering for this shit."

Udina sighed. "Touche. Alright, what have you blown up now?"

She spent the next ten minutes summarizing the contact with the True Geth and its claims, forwarding a snippet of video it had displayed. Udina scanned the data carefully while listening, his mind already at work on how to spin this.

As she finished, she sighed. "Right now, the only people who really know what is going on are my Beta Squad – two AIS types, Tali, Liara, and a DACT. But the entire marine force saw the old style geth and could figure out they'd been fighting the geth we've been fighting."

She ran her fingers through her hair, a nervous habit. "I talked to my political officers, Jiong and D'Alte, and both of them seemed to think this information would be … destabilizing. To the Council, to the quarians, and maybe to the SA."

Udina managed a hard bark of laughter at that. "Destabilizing is the least of the things it would be, Shepard. We have a political shitstorm here."

She tilted her head with an amused smile. "You really like that phrase don't you?"

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temples. "I have gotten used to it since you came into my life, unfortunately." He paused, mind racing. "Containing this information in the long term is … problematic. STG made a series of deep probes into the Perseus Veil almost twenty years ago, attempting to gain intelligence on a possible geth threat, and were not able to get into the Rannoch system due to its defenses."

He gestured to her report. "If this information is true, though, only five percent of the geth once there are still there. At some point the quarians are going to want to instigate the Council into attacking the geth and reclaiming their home world – this is a huge sticking point. On the other hand, blindly releasing into the Council without giving the quarians a warning would be inadvisable as well." He paused.

The reality was the Council would use this sort of thing against the Quarians, and God only knew what the fools on Earth would make of it.

She nodded. "I didn't think just … wholesale dropping this information in the hands of the Council was going to work. Just because they aren't acting like total fucking morons doesn't mean I trust them. But I don't know if just covering this up is the right way to go either. I'm not much for lying."

Udina nodded slowly. "I understand that. For now, this is what I want you to do. I believe you have orders to proceed to Arcturus. I presume, from the last bits of your report here, that there is no evidence left behind of what you found except the data you gleaned?"

She sighed. "I had my men recover some of the geth bodies for study."

Udina nodded. "Right now … this is too big for us to address. And to be honest, Shepard … this is not our problem. It is the quarian Admiralty's problem, and I doubt they would be happy if we simply assumed this … true geth … was telling the entire truth unvarnished. I will have a quarian ship meet you on route to Arcturus and offload the geth bodies – let them examine them. Simply tell the Council the information you retrieved was from the geth databanks."

Shepard nodded. "We were also able to get some quarian specific medical information..."

Udina shrugged. "I see no reason that need to go anywhere but the quarians. Tell everyone else that the matter is under consideration by the Council and is classified Tantalus, and they are not to discuss it with anyone. As for your AIS and Commissariat assets … I would suggest informing them directly that I will be handling it to prevent any disruption to the political goodwill humanity has built up."

She nodded again. "Yes, sir."

Udina sighed. "Once you arrive...we need to discuss this wedding of yours, Shepard. It's going to cause a lot of problems."

She narrowed her eyes. "I don't really have much choice, if I want the fucking Justicars to leave Liara alone in the long run, not to mention people are going to have problems with a Baroness who came from the slums of the NYArc. It's not how I'd choose for this to happen..."

Udina placed his hands flat on his desk. "Shepard. I do understand that. I am merely telling you that you are going to face a lot of … negative commentary. I am sure you are already quite familiar with being attacked in the media … but I do not think you are ready to have Dr. T'Soni smeared in such a fashion without losing that hair-trigger temper of yours."

She gave him a depreciating frown. "You're just grumpy I haven't eaten any babies recently."

He grunted. "No. Against my better judgment, I find myself worried about you. You are not exactly equipped to handle emotion pressure of this nature."

She sighed. "I know. I know! Fuck, what the hell am I supposed to do? From the minute I was tapped for this job, literally nothing has gone the way it should. I didn't want to have shit go down this way, and God knows what it will do to Liara, but what choices do I have?"

Udina supposed she had a point there. He grimaced, and shook his head. "The position you are in may be difficult but is highly enviable. My job is more than covering your political pratfalls, and yours is more than liquefying things with your shotgun. Admiral Ahern and his staff should have given you at least the basics on political communications while at Pinnacle. I just want you to understand that on some issues I will have to be politically, publicly disapproving."

She shrugged. "At least you have the balls to say that up front, Udina. Anything else?"

His eyes narrowed. "Not at this time, I need to get with Thin'Koris and hash out how we are going to spin this to avoid a monumental disaster." He glanced over the report again. "Luckily, the sheer breadth of this information about the geth is likely to keep everyone distracted for some time, as well as make selling a war against them a lot easier if they are still involved with elements of Benezia's forces. The batarian angle troubles me, but that's something for another day."

She folded her arms. "If that's it, then I need to get the battlegroup moving. Admiral Schulman is driving me mad."

Udina's eyes narrowed. "Rear Admiral Schulman?" His voice was wary and suddenly cold, and Shepard raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"Yes...the name ring a bell?"

Udina leaned back again. "Shepard … Admiral Schulman …" He broke off. "We'll discuss it when you get to Arcturus. Just watch yourself. She is not what she appears to be. She's very hard core Terra Firma, and extremely xenophobic."

Shepard's expression soured. "No wonder she didn't want to eat with my officers. Bitch." She straightened. "Should I alter anything in my report to the SA Admiralty? I really don't like the idea, but..."

Udina shook his head. "No, if you have AIS and Commissars watching that's a dangerous tack to take. Simply inform them that you've already communicated with me and pass along how I told you to address the issue. Branson and his ilk are likely to assume these True Geth are lying, and they'll only be interested in the data to pursue their single purpose war against the geth and use the information to justify pulling back the fleet from the borders. Let them run with it."

She nodded. "In that case...I'll see you in a few days." She paused. "You can come to the wedding if you like..." Her voice was curiously hesitant.

Udina managed to come up with a smile from somewhere. "I would appreciate the gesture, Shepard. It would be a severe political gaffe for me to attend such a controversial wedding." He watched her carefully and was surprised to see a flicker of disappointment in her eyes. "...however, since you did give me my job, I suppose I can allow myself one political gaffe for this year. That's my limit, however."

Clear surprise showed on her features, before she smiled. "I'll have Anderson contact you. Shepard out."

He exhaled again as the link cut, before tapping his desk comm panel. "Thin'Koris, this is Donnel Udina. I have some bad news for you, please meet me in my embassy...and you should bring a stiff drink."

O-ATTWN-O

Shepard's report to the Admiralty of the SA went about like Udina suspected, with the exception of the reaction of the Commissariat Adviser. The Admiralty Board – Branson, two Admirals of the Red, the Naval Commandant, and Dragunov – were receiving the report via commlink, and most of them looked floored by the revelations.

The Naval Commandant, a grim looking female with a cybernetic eye and scarring on both cheeks, had interjected as soon as Shepard was done. "Admiral Branson, I must interrupt. This information puts our relationship with the Quarians in a new light if they are war criminals."

Branson sighed. "Based on the information Major-Commander Shepard provided, all we know is the outlandish claims of purported quarians who chose to back a species of robots. Robots, I might add, of which ninety-five percent went on to support a genocidal robot intent on killing off all organic life. I think I can make a distinction on who I'd rather back."

Another admiral chuckled. "Not to mention the quarians in the Flotilla need us, and this batch on Rannoch clearly isn't interested in the rest of the galaxy."

The Commandant scowled. "And none of you have every considered the possibility that the quarian Admiralty is feeding us the lies we want to hear?"

Shepard almost snarled. "With all due respect, ma'am, they've been exiled for three centuries, run out of every habitable system, treated like thieves and vagrants, and were about two or three generations from collapse. They also died by the tens of thousands to fight against the geth and Benezia's soldiers and Nazara. These bastards on Rannoch didn't even bother to warn us the shit was coming, and they knew Nazara was up to no good."

She shook her head. "I know you Commissariat people are obsessed with crime and guilt but there has to be a fucking line!"

The Commandant gave her an icy look. "That is for the Commissariat to decide."

Dragunov finally spoke, his voice harsh and cold. "Enough! It is NOT for the Commissariat to decide our political interactions with other races, nor do you get to judge the entirety of the quarian people based on crimes they may or may not have committed three centuries ago!" He turned to Shepard. "For now, follow Councilor Udina's instructions. Since I strongly suspect Admiral Rael'Zorah will be in contact with his daughter, Lieutenant Commander Tali'Zorah may communicate this information to the Admiralty, with the adjuration of the fact that we will be withholding much of it from the Council proper and suggest they do the same."

Shepard nodded. "Fair enough. Orders for now, sir?"

Dragunov glanced at Branson, who sighed. "Once you reach Arcturus, your … handler wishes to debrief you. After that, your ships will be stood down for BuShips final commissioning inspection and certifications. That process will take no less than ten days due to the cycle time on the cores, so your ships and crews may proceed to extended shore leave commencing at 1000 Monday morning. Since we have been informed you have personal issues to attend to, I suspect you will be occupied with those – BG Chiron will be shipping out at 1845 on the 24th, two weeks from Monday."

He paused. "You may or may not be called up slightly earlier than that – BuShips estimates core cert will be done by Saturday morning, and if we have an emergency situation we may activate you that afternoon, so I would strongly suggest informing your crews of that. The quarians have not had any hits on their searches in the Traverse except the geth base, but the batarian pirate activity is picking up and moving galactic south, out of the Traverse and closer to SA territory proper. Given the paucity of resources we have, BG Chiron may be needed."

Dragunov spoke again. "Admiral Ahern submitted a performance report on you that was very favorable. Assuming there are no issues with your performance in the near future, you will be selected for promotion to Naval Captain by the end of the year. At that point you WILL have to commit to a six month naval training package, so make sure the Council is aware of that and how it will affect your … availability for Spectre gallivanting about."

She nodded. "Yes, sir. Understood."

Branson nodded. "Good work, Major. Dismissed. Admiralty out." The commlink clicked off, and Shepard slumped back into her chair before glancing across the desk. "Well?"

Commissar Jiong and Susan, who had both been sitting out of the range of the pickups for both her call to Udina and the Admirals, glanced at each other, Susan shrugging. Jiong spoke. "About as predicted, Shepard. I suggest you just do what you're told and keep your head down."

Susan nodded along with him. "Yep. I mean, it's very confusing what is happening with these other quarian people, but this is waaay too big for you to make any decisions about. And frankly … " She trailed off, before continuing. "...it's going to kick off some big discussions in the SA government, most likely, and it will be best if you aren't a part of those."

Shepard shrugged. "Politics isn't really my thing anyway."

Jiong signed. "A weakness, Shepard, that will eventually bite you in the posterior. Sooner or later you will have to overcome your reticence to deal with these things yourself, especially given your proximity to the Council, the President, the Nobility, and being a command officer."

She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Yeah, but I already got enough shit on my plate right now. For now, thanks. Have Tali come see me so we can transmit to her dad – this should be good for a laugh."

The two Commissars stood. "You have a very warped sense of humor, Shepard. We'll be below, if you need us." With that Jiong and Susan left, and Shepard sat back to review her thoughts.

It wasn't long before Tali wandered into her wardroom, coughing slightly. "Sara?"

Shepard smiled. "Hey, Tali. Have a seat." She gestured to the chair in front of her desk and the quarian did so, feet together and twisting her hands.

Shepard exhaled heavily. "We're going to have to present this information to the quarian Admiralty … and by that, I mean your father. And we'll have to give him all of it, I think, not just the quicky version. I would rather have you here to help me talk to him rather than do it myself, because the guy pisses me off."

Tali nodded her head slowly. "If you think that's best..."

Shepard nodded then tapped her comms panel. "Traynor, send a data channel request and comms link to the Quarian Admiralty, highest priority, and request Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Alarei."

"Yes, ma'am. Transmitting now."

Shepard leaned back in her chair. "Slave the response to the wardroom repeater, highest encryption, and let everyone know I'm busy."

There was a delay of almost thirty seconds before a signal came in, the sigil of the quarian Admiralty displaying for several more seconds before the large frame of Rael'Zorah filled the screen. "Commander Shepard."

She inclined her head. "Major now, actually, Admiral. I'm here with your daughter, Tali."

Rael nodded. "I assume she has performed suitably as your chief engineer?"

Shepard let herself smile. "Admiral Ahern, our most skilled instructor in the SA, gave her extremely high marks, and she's been instrumental in the refit of my fleet. I'm sorry to keep her from her home, but she is critical to our operations here, and I think she sends a message to everyone who sees her work just how good the quarian people are at what they do."

Rael gave a small laugh. "Someone has become more polished in their speech, Major. But it is good to hear that Tali is … doing well." His glowing gaze took in her image for a moment, before his head adjusted to stare at Shepard. "I have my doubts, however, that you called me merely for that."

Shepard let out a long sigh. "No, sir, we did not." She went into the explanation of what they found in the geth base, including the True Geth, the message from Rannoch, and the information they acquired.

Shockingly, Rael did not appear surprised by any of this information, and didn't interrupt until she was finished. "... I see."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "You don't sound shocked."

Rael coughed slightly. "That is due to the fact I'm not, Shepard. Tali...I wish you did not have to learn this information now, but … perhaps it is best."

Tali's eyes narrowed. "You mean they were telling the truth?!"

Rael snorted. "Down, little fish." Tali ducked her head at the affectionate sounding nickname, and Rael continued. "And no. As usual, the wretches have decided to smear history and truth into a form they think makes them out to be the victims."

Shepard folded her hands together. "Explain, please, Admiral."

Rael sighed. "This is very old, ugly history, Shepard. I would ask, before I begin, what exactly you plan to tell the Council and the SA?"

She shrugged. "The SA has already been informed of everything. They think the True Geth are a pack of liars, and even if they aren't we're not going to listen to people who hid while your own people died bravely." She smiled. "The Admiralty and Councilor Udina directed me to only share the geth combat data with the Council, and to tell them we recovered it from the base ourselves. The revelation of what we found out from this True Geth thing is up to your people to divulge."

Rael nodded slowly. "And, of course, this places us as hostages to the SA's release of the information if we don't cooperate." He sighed. "I can hardly lambaste you for not lying to your superiors, however."

Tali leaned forward. "We also got .. some medical data from them. About immune conditions."

Shepard nodded. "Tali was able to get that out of them – forgot about that. We'll send it along with the data packet. We also have some of these True Geth bodies – Udina said he'd get a quarian ship to pick them up from us before we hit Arcturus"

Rael nodded again. "...good work, then, Tali. That kind of information is a surprising sharing of air from the … those people. And the geth war-forms...well, that will at least keep Daro'Xen busy for a bit." He shook his head. "I suppose I will tell you the truth, or at least, the truth as we know it. Please keep in mind that some of the records are missing, and others are distorted."

He paused. "And I cannot say for certain whose version is more accurate. Ours, at least, is backed up by video evidence and personal logs. I am sure you will disagree with some of the actions taken by the Fleet in the past, but keep in mind that we – the current Admiralty – didn't sign off on any of those choices."

The big quarian leaned back in his own chair, apparently in his personal quarters. "When the quarian people devised the geth, they were designed as labor-saving devices networked together. We did not plan for them to become semi-sentient, or aware, or whatever they became. There is fragmentary evidence that some elements of the military may have … tampered with the VI net-ware programming matrices used. And there were elements of society and the military both suggesting we turn the geth into a military force, which was strongly resisted by the civilian government."

"At some point, the geth were moved from more primitive forms to more dedicated platforms and even moved off-world in large numbers. As this happened, we believe tying the geth networks together via FTL communications may have accelerated their development. When geth began asking questions indicating sentience, the military began to panic."

"The quarian civilian government at the time wanted to transmit a shutdown signal to the geth, to send them all into stand-down and research the issue. We couldn't let it get out to the Citadel races that we'd awoken an AI, after all. The plan was to shut them off, examine the issue, and let the scientists and cyber-ethics people figure out what do next."

Rael grunted. "Unfortunately, before that could happen, there was an altercation. In those days quarian society was undergoing a great deal of stress from the lower classes, who were being put out of work by geth labor. Before the shutdown signal could go out, a geth questioning a lower class worker sparked an incident of some kind. We still don't know what it was, only that enraged lower class quarians became convinced the geth were going to 'replace them' and went on a rampage."

"They dismantled six geth before the geth reacted to defend themselves, killing nineteen quarians."

Shepard grimaced. "And then?"

Rael shrugged. "The government was in the process of implementing the shutdown when some sort of hacktivists decided the geth should be allowed to decide their own fate and began counter-hacking the signal, alerting the geth that they were going to be 'shut down and melted down for defending themselves'. At the same time, a coalition of disaffected sorts who wanted to cause trouble for the government and wanted the quarians to withdraw from the Council used the activity to stir up riots."

Rael adjusted his reik. "In the end, we know that the geth somehow shifted their network to be immune to the shutdown signal. They sent a small group of units to the government building, asking if they had souls, and if they had rights. Geth asking about such esoteric things started a huge debate about if we had the 'right' to kill off an intelligent race, even if we did not intend for such."

"At this point, the military took action, seeing the geth as a clear threat. They sent down marine squads to the surface, eliminating many of the geth in the major cities, and performed an illegal strike on the main geth construction facility." Rael's voice faltered. "The strike was … poorly planned, and ended up killing hundreds of quarian workers alongside the geth. The officers in charge of the strike were cashiered and sent to trial, but the damage was done."

"The geth apparently decided that they were under attack for no reason and began to fight back. Some quarians sided with them, and the military began to kill them too. The tensions in quarian society at that point were quite bad, and the geth rebellion stirred up all kinds of problems. The military decided that martial law was required. When the civilian government ordered them to stand down … the military launched a coup, arresting the rightful government and imprisoning them."

Rael folded his arms. "And that would have been the end of it if the geth had not been more clever than we thought. They managed to hack the ground-based GTS defenses of Rannoch, as well as most of our military war-robots, and launched a counter-attack, even while they overwhelmed the info-systems of the fleet. They broke into the warehouses holding spare geth forms that had never been used, millions of them, activating them all. Many quarians helped them – some lower class, convinced the geth would be more fair to them than traditional quarian society, others who wanted quarians to not associate with aliens."

Rael smiled. "The battle was ugly and we lost, badly, in many areas. The colonies had to be abandoned when the geth simply blew up the life support systems, and the military appropriated all space ships to contain the geth, using them to evacuate colonists. Haestrom was lost when the geth sabotaged many of the environmental controls of the planet's various facilities, killing tens of thousands of quarians who didn't side with them. The situation over Rannoch was out of control, and eventually we evacuated as many people as we could to the LiveShips – huge vessels originally used to colonize planets – as well as any other ships we could."

Shepard frowned. "And then?"

Rael shrugged. "The geth were able to subvert part of the fleet, as well as the GTS orbital platforms, automated fighter defenses and orbital defenses. The fleet was driven off. But not before Admiral Dhe'la'Raan tried to cripple the geth once and for all. As we fled, she used an override program to instruct every single ship in fleet to fire all weapons at the surface of Rannoch."

Tali gasped. "But..."

Rael nodded grimly. "We cannot know how many of the quarians who chose to side with the geth must have died. Millions, probably. Dhe'la'Raan was arrested, tried, and thrown out of an airlock, but the ugly fact remained that the Fleet was defeated and seemingly tried to destroy Rannoch out of spite. We spent almost three years attempting to hold onto our outlying colonies before the geth simply overpowered us and drove us out...and then the Council did nothing to help us, claiming we had brought ourselves down, throwing us off the Citadel. You know the rest."

Rael looked at Shepard. "The High Admiralty has known there were most likely quarian survivors on Rannoch and possibly Haestrom for some time. For centuries, our primary focus was on refitting our fleet from a mess of civilian ships to a fleet of armed merchants, warships and invasion vessels – a task we only really completed shortly before the Benezia Incident. Up until recently we did not have any real data on the situation on Rannoch."

He shrugged. "The reality of the situation, however, was simple: these quarians left on Rannoch were basically much like your Terra Firma party – they hated and looked down on aliens, and had long advocated we use the geth as an army of conquest. And in any event, they were completely irrational in our view. Informing the Council of them would also require us admitting to bombarding our own home world, of mass murder and other things."

Shepard shook her head. "Well. That's an ugly mess. What is the quarian Admiralty going to do about this?"

Rael gave another sigh. "I'm afraid I don't know, Major. The fact that the geth – or at least some element of them – is still in cooperation with the quarians on Rannoch makes any attempt to retake the home world dicey at best. It remains the primary reason why we haven't simply attempted a direct assault, now that we've upgraded our ships and reorganized ourselves into a more military culture – by our estimates, assuming all of our anti-geth measures worked as intended, we had a 45% chance of winning a straight fight against the geth. At least until Nazara came along."

The quarian admiral made a gesture with his hands. "The situation is both more and less dire now – if the majority of the geth are no longer in alliance with the quarians on Rannoch, we have far more than enough ships and people to simply take them and conquer the place. On the other hand, the fact remains they appear to be hostile to the majority of the rest of the geth – the ones working with Nazara and Benezia's people – means they serve a useful purpose. Right now the Admiralty is already split between those wishing to simply find a new home world and move on, and those wishing to retake Rannoch – this will only widen the gap."

Tali nodded sourly. "You mean like that crazy bosh'tet Daro'Xen?"

Rael laughed. "Yes, Admiral Xen is … going to be problematic." The quarian looked at Shepard. "I will have to see what happens, and I will be in contact once I now more."

Shepard nodded. "In that case, Admiral, I leave you to it. Shepard out." She killed the channel and then gave a disgusted snort. "I don't think I like that story very much, Tali."

The quarian girl slowly shook her head. "I... that is not what we were … taught when I was growing up. At all." Her voice was upset and shaky, and she looked up at Shepard. "Keelah, how many people did the Fleet kill to make them hate us so? What my father described..."

Shepard nodded sourly. "It sounds like the kind of bullshit humans pulled during the Days of Iron, or the turians did in the Burning, Tali. When civil society breaks down, people react in ways that only seem to escalate the problems. I don't know what to tell you except that I don't think there are any governments that are upright and blameless anymore. People, maybe. Groups. But it seems like anyone calling the shots ends up as a evil douche-bag."

Tali nodded numbly. "I think I need to lay down a bit, and think about things. Is that okay?"

Shepard gestured. "Yeah, sure. If you need to talk...well, I'm not much good at it. But I am here."

The quarian nodded and stood, cybernetic leg giving a faint whine as she did so. "Thanks, Shepard." She turned and left, head down, and Shepard rubbed her temples.

"The shit else is going to go wrong?"

O-ATTWN-O

On the battered, airless moon of a remote world on the edge of the Terminus systems, two black-painted turian cutters slowly landed on a flattened area of terrain marked by dropped flares.

Black-armored figures, each one with a reddish triangle logo on their chest plate, stood in a loose semicircle around the landing zone, with a figure cloaked in black standing furthest back, next to the towering figure of a krogan. As the engines of the two cutters flamed out and ceased, the krogan turned to the turian next to him.

"It will be interesting to see how the asari deal with your … interference, turian." Ganar Okeer's well modulated voice was distorted by the survival suit he wore on the airless world, his limbs still constrained with obedience shackles. The turian next to him gave a long sigh.

"I assure you, Doctor Okeer, our intervention is necessary. We simply wish to establish a line of communication, and this is the best method." Tetrimus merely watched the ships on the landing zone, ready for trouble.

As he spoke, the nearer of the two cutters shuddered, before a spiral hatchway opened, revealing two heavily armored turians with environmental masks, followed by a group of asari in thin enviro suits and robes. At the back of the group was as short , slight asari in more elaborate armor, who walked forward calmly to meet Tetrimus.

The asari spoke in a low, almost hesitant tone. "You are … Tetrimus?"

The turian gave a faint inclination of his head. "I am the Mouth of the Broker. My boss would like to establish contact with your group … and those in contact with you. The Collectors."

The asari's expression, visible through her clear mask, was one of slight confusion. "I am Ylana, acolyte of Lady Benezia. I do not understand why exactly you wish communion with the Vanguard, but if you are willing to pay the price there is no issue." Her voice firmed slightly. "However, the price is likely to be steep as you have ruined several of our operations and tipped our existence to the Council."

Tetrimus's eye narrowed. "How so? We have been in communications blackout since our strike against Okeer."

Ylana's voice was cool. "Elements of the Systems Alliance discovered evidence of Broker activity at Lenal...as well as evidence of Okeer's presence. Our agent in the Citadel Security forces tells us they are actively looking for our location, and are suspicious of your involvement."

Tetrimus cursed faintly. Leave it to Tazzik to botch the delicate. "No matter. The Broker will be able to spin this in a fashion that does not implicate us negatively. And our own intelligence is more complete – including an agent within the ranks of the Spectres. We will have enough heads up to warn you of any attacks."

Ylana gave a shallow shrug. "First, return Okeer to us. He has critical work to conduct."

Tetrimus clicked a control on his wrist, freeing Okeer. The big krogan flexed his wrists and fixed the turian with a glare before stomping over to Ylana. "I thank you for my freedom, Lady Ylana, although I fear I have lost both the samples procured and years of work."

The asari waved a hand. "We can provide you with replacements – we were able to salvage some elements of the operations Saleon was performing, and while he has been captured, you are more than an equal. We will talk later, the second cutter will convey you to your next location, which is more secure."

Okeer bowed and headed off. Tetrimus eyed the asari woman cautiously before speaking. "And as for us?"

Ylana smiled faintly. "The Collectors have sent a representative to speak with you." She touched her omni, and the first cutter opened its doors again.

A tall, bulky figure in obscuring black robes stepped out. Strange shapes under the robe baffled the eye, and the figure seemed to wearing some kind of suit of biological material under the rope. Four glowing yellow dots stared out at Tetrimus as it stiffly walked down the ramp to face him.

"This is the contact?" The voice was beyond cold, almost mechanical. Dead. Without inflection or tone, and yet with a perfect turian accent.

Ylana nodded. "Yes. Our part is done."

The figure gestured. "Then go. Our ability to communicate with the Host is still impeded, and they must know what has transpired. The faster you restore the Beacon, the faster we can notify the Host."

Ylana bowed. "And our agreement?"

The thing tilted its head. "So far, nothing has changed. Your people remain the most suitable for Ascension. My own kind are becoming genetically exhausted, and a new Caretaker will be required if nothing else. Survival is still possible – if you do not fail."

With that Ylana merely bowed again and headed back to her ship, along with her asari and turians. Tetrimus gave them a curious look before turning back to the figure. "You are not going with them?"

The thing pulled open its robes. It was semi-humanoid, but with four arms and heavy, hooked legs. Its survival suit was mottled flesh, with a black-blue sheen and several embedded electronic devices that shone with orange radiance. It spoke again, a buzzing inflection to its words. "No. This body fails, and will be disposed of in any event. It allows us to communicate with you at no risk."

Tetrimus flicked a mandible at the strangeness of that response. "I see. As I have said, I am a representative of the Shadow Broker , a – "

The figure made a gesture. "We are aware of your organization. Your interference in our operations on the Citadel was a detriment to our plans. We see no value in this communication. Your additional interference in our operations after that point mark you as a liability."

Tetrimus continued. "We were not aware of the truth of the situation until recently, when upon review of salvaged footage of the fight between Lady Benezia and Commander Shepard, we learned your kind are actually Protheans and serve the Reapers. Lady Benezia was no fool, and if the Protheans have survived I can only assume she was planning some method for the asari to do so as well."

The Collector shifted its position slightly, even as the two turian cutters began to take off in the background. "The conditions for cooperation with Benezia and Saren was the delivery of Nazara to the Citadel and deactivating its defenses – that objective failed, utterly. The destruction of one of the Ascended is likely to result in a Purge of this galactic space. It is unlikely you will survive this, as you have nothing to offer."

Tetrimus flicked his mandible again. "Untrue. You are clearly continuing your operations, but given what little we know, it seems clear your masters – the Reapers – are not here. Based on what intelligence we have, Nazara was supposed to summon them, but was destroyed before he could do so. Thus you need to … what? Communicate this to the rest of your kind? Ask for instructions? Open a new way? Or take the Citadel yourselves?"

The Collector was silent for long moments. "The destruction of Nazara resulted in a final message from him to his brethren. This message attempted to route through our connection to the Long Dark, but ended up destroying several critical components instead. These components are biotechnological in origin and must be engineered over time, requiring a great deal of raw materials as well as several artifacts scattered across the galaxy."

Tetrimus scoffed. "And Ylana has offered to get them? With her tiny handful of crazy asari tramps and broken turians? It will not take long for her to be noticed, and the Council will have her smashed flat in short order, leaving you without allies. Shepard was there for that conversation, the one where Benezia let slip you are actually Protheans. If she bothers to remember it and informs the Council, the Collectors will be facing coordinated resistance."

The turian spread his hands. "Whereas the Broker network is silent, efficient, and already entrenched. We can act without tipping the Council off – presuming there is value added for us."

The Collector was silent for almost thirty seconds before speaking. "You have a goal?"

Tetrimus shrugged. "The Broker wishes to ensure the survival of his own native race, the yahg."

The Collector twitched. "We have already examined the yahg. They are not spacefaring, but they have the potential to be problematic. For now they are safe, but they are likely to be obliterated in the next cycle of cleansing after this."

Tetrimus shrugged. "The Broker would also like to ensure his own personal survival, as well as that of the network."

The Collector examined Tetrimus minutely. "...accommodating that is possible. A small number of units will be needed in the cleanup following transition, and your groups intelligence resources would be useful in finding holdouts and resistance networks. Such indulgence is likely only to be short term. Perhaps two hundred cycles."

Tetrimus figured that, with the exception of the handful of asari elements, everyone in the Broker Network would be dead in two hundred years anyway. "Assuming there are no further requirements, I believe we can come to a deal."

The Collector held up a meaty claw. "First, payment is required for your earlier indiscretions. There are two tasks that must be accomplished. This will demonstrate your competence."

Tetrimus nodded. "I figured as much. What are these tasks?"

The Collector gestured to the ships departing. "When Ylana has finished her tasks, her and her group are of no further use to the Ascended. Benezia and Saren had their chance. While Saren was defeated and thus the turians may be given a second chance, Benezia defied Nazara and was instrumental in his downfall. As such, her group will be liquidated once her usefulness expires. Doing this would be easier for you than us."

Tetrimus nodded. "We can assist in that. What about the geth?"

The Collector shrugged. "The geth are of no issue. They have their instructions."

Tetrimus folded his arms. "And the second task?"

The Collector spread its arms. "The elimination of the one known as Shepard. She is the primary reason for Nazara's defeat. Defiance cannot be tolerated."

Tetrimus grimaced. "That will be … difficult. But not impossible, although it will take some time to setup. Shepard is too well protected right now, but we can always set up a situation where she is vulnerable."

The collector straightened. "If she can be captured, alive or dead, then do so. Otherwise, kill her. Without Shepard the powers in charge have no direct evidence of what is coming and will assume they have time to prepare."

Tetrimus nodded. "And how much time do they have?"

The collector turned to glance at the starry sky. "If the Host does not hear from us in a few more cycles, they are likely to investigate themselves. Perhaps fifty cycles from now. Once we are in communication again, they may decide to immediately come, or delay until certain triggers are met. That is their choice."

The thing twitched. "This unit is failing. We have communicated this agreement to the rest of the Collective. When you are contacted, eliminate Ylana however you see fit. And we expect Shepard dead within one cycle."

Tetrimus bowed. "The Broker Network … agrees."

The Collector spasmed and began sloughing off flesh, collapsing slowly to a smoking pile of goop on the dusty regolith. Tetrimus sighed, and glanced at his men.

"Clean up signs of the landing and wipe the relay banks. Incinerate this … mess. When it's all clear, come get me, I'll be in my rooms on the command ship."

Twenty minutes later, he finished a long transmission to the Broker, who was now pondering the next move via commlink.

"I have been monitoring the political situation carefully. I will have elements ready to placate the Council, and suggest we were attempting to stop Okeer from curing the Genophage. Our strike was … overzealous, and we have already disciplined the elements in charge of it. We will imply that the humans on the fueling station were also indoctrinated and that such subjects cannot be safely handled."

Tetrimus nodded. "And Ylana?"

The Broker gave a rumbling chuckle. "You implanted the tracer nanite cloud on the landing area in the lunar dust?"

Tetrimus nodded again, and the Broker gestured to his many displays. "When the time comes, we will be able to pinpoint her location faster than the ship-rats will. They will no doubt send in Spectres to kill her, saving us any outlays of expenses or material to accomplish the job."

The Broker's voice deepened. "Destroying the Butcher will be more problematic. But I have a plan for that in the works already as well. For now, resume all normal activity and communications. Dispatch Agent Shields to shadow Shepard."

Tetrimus sighed. "Given her past attachment, is that wise?"

The Broker folded its massive hands together. "Psychological evaluation of Shepard indicates she values friends highly. Shields is bitter and disaffected. This conflict will drive Shields further into our ranks and douse any remaining affection she has for Shepard. When the time comes, however, she will be instrumental in destroying Shepard."

A pause, and the Broker chuckled. "Recent intelligence implies Shepard will be marrying Liara T'Soni on Arcturus in a few days. Make sure Shields finds out."

Tetrimus shrugged. "As you wish. Tazzik seems to have done a very poor job on the snatch and grab of Okeer..."

The Broker's folded hands tightened. "Tazzik is … perhaps too unsubtle for operations of that nature. He will be given a different task for now. There is evidence several components of Cerberus may have survived the Council purge. Both Jack Harper and Matriarch Trellani remain alive. I want them both dead."

Tetrimus sighed. The Broker's obsession with Harper and his asari mistress Trellani was tiresome in the extreme. "I will see what my operatives find, but Harper is not amateur. It will take time."

The Broker gave a rumbling growl. "Then I suggest you begin immediately. Time is money. Broker out."


	19. Chapter 19 : Announcments

_**A/N:** Fluffy and story-building chapter.  
_

_If there's something you'd like to see in the next couple of chatpers before the Bring Down the Sky bit, leave a review and let me know. I'll see what I can do. No von Grath/Chakwas shipping yet. (Soon.)_

_As a side note, this chapter originally included a long piece about the Council of Lords meeting with Shepard, and the Council meeting, but I took them out due to word count and flow. _

_EDIT: Fixed Mindoir ref with Torfan._

* * *

_'When Shepard did that interview with Wong, Garrus and I were sitting in a cafe. The entire place when completely quiet, then one old Marine chuckled and said "This should go over well".'_

_\- Citadel Security Executor Telanya Nasan Vakarian , 'Don't Like It? Kiss My Crest'_

* * *

The return of Battlegroup Chiron to Arcturus was, unfortunately, something difficult to keep out of the news. While a departure time could be carefully prepared and concealed from the public (and media), it took a good hour and a half to transit from the mass relay to docking positions at Arcturus due to all the traffic.

Meaning that when the Kazan finally docked, there were already media waiting for news about Major Shepard and her latest feats of arms. They were vastly disappointed when a pinnace detached from the battle cruiser, soaring away.

Shepard's pleasure at being able to escape being interrogated by the media (or worse, fans) was the only pleasant thing about her morning. It started off bad as she made her formal report to the Citadel Council from Alliance Command. While certainly impressed by the depth of information gathered, the ramifications of such were chilling.

Shepard hadn't spent any time actually reviewing the data the geth gave her, and hearing it listed out was a punch in the gut. While the geth were definitely weakened in terms of ships, no real damage had been done to the geth infrastructure. Tireless and without a need for an economy, they could probably rebuild their warfleet a lot faster than the Citadel races could.

While they had lost an estimated fifty to seventy percent of their fleet strength, that still left them with something on the order of six or seven dreadnoughts and probably hundreds of cruisers – and going into geth space to finish them off would be extremely bloody.

She was dismissed so that the Council could confer with the STG about their findings, and she was happy no one seemed curious at just how she'd managed to get so much information out of geth systems. Then again, Tali's name was invoked in several places, and she had been able to get this entire mess going by pulling out that voice snippet from a downed geth in the first place.

The morning didn't improve, sadly.

Shepard spent the morning involved in things she hated doing – a good two hours enduring an 'audience' with the Council of Lords, most of whom weren't even physically present, instead teleconferencing using FTL comm chains from ruinously expensive buoys. After having her nobility 'confirmed', she was informed she could found her estates upon any Alliance world unclaimed by another lord, or upon an existing world with that noble's permission.

Without bothering to think much about it she chose Inter'sai, given that she actually owned a house there now, and the relative unimportance of the world meant no noble was interested in it in the first place. With that out of the way, and having to endure more talk about her marriage and other trivialities, she managed to escape, and after a short lunch headed to the Special Operations Command building.

Her office was as she left it, but her nameplate was different. Below the 'CO BG Chiron' plate, a second smaller plate read 'CO, Office of Presidential Investigative Authority'.

The office next to it was now occupied, the name plate reading 'PIA Offices'. She sighed and entered her own office, sitting down at her desk and powering on the terminal to get whatever crap was being slung onto her out of the way.

She had a throng of messages, and she immediately commed Ensign Traynor after perusing them. "Traynor, my message stack is _seven fucking terabytes_."

The voice of Traynor on the commlink was somehow both flustered and confident. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot entirely to run a cleaning routine on...just one moment, ma'am. I'll have that fixed up in no time. I was busy updating our encryption systems...forgot...sorry..."

A few minutes later and the size was far more manageable, and Shepard swore softly. "That's...pretty impressive. Tell me, Traynor, how much time in rate do you have as an ensign?"

Traynor's voice sounded small. "Um...only three months. Ma'am."

A small smile twitched across Shepard's face. "Well, I can't manage this whole communications mess by myself. There are three empty offices on my floor, and apparently I've been put in charge of something called the Presidential Investigative Authority. I'm going to snag you an office and put you formally in charge of my communications – work with Commissar Jiong on that."

She tapped out a request on the BuPers link on the terminal. "And I'm putting you in for merit promotion."

Traynor actually squeaked, and Shepard stifled a snicker. "Breathe, girl."

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am."

Shepard spent a good fifteen minutes notifying the building director – a rather run-down looking commander who reminded her of an older version of Lieutenant Dallas – that her comms personnel needed an office, which he agreed to in short order, and after spending fifteen minutes looking for coffee (and finding the building's mess) then began on her messages.

Most of them were simple enough – confirmations of various orders and equipment authorizations. A message from Anderson, asking her to come over to the apartment where Aethyta was staying and to bring Liara tonight to discuss 'the event'. Confirmations from Valerie Kyle and others that they'd attend the wedding. An almost snide note from General von Grath with an appointment for her and Liara to attend a tailor the next day.

The rest of the messages, sadly, were SA dispatches, which she was forced to read and acknowledge. Most of them dealt with anti-geth operations – the geth had been smashed in several systems, and were clearly losing steam – but were still deadly. The Citadel reported losing almost a hundred ships, and the amount of damage wreaked on the Twenty-Third Scout was nothing compared to what happened when an Asari Republic fleet attempting to corral a geth dreadnought ran into heavy geth reinforcements. Three asari dreadnoughts heavily damaged, one destroyed, and over a hundred cruisers and destroyer-equivalents destroyed. The geth paid a heavy price, losing five dreadnoughts and over two hundred ships, but the Republic could ill afford such heavy losses.

Demonstrations on Thessia regarding the Triune were calming, although the Justicars had publicly executed nineteen asari on suspicion of collaboration with the Triune. Riots on Palaven had finally ceased, but the Arterius Cluster was still torn by separatists and strife, and almost three hundred thousand additional troops were being rushed to the region to restore order after the Cluster Primarch was assassinated by what was suspected to be an indoctrinated turian. The turians had called in Spectres to help them clean up the mess.

Shepard sighed, pushing back her chair slightly. God alone knew how many turians and asari had been indoctrinated under Saren and Benezia. AIS investigators were still piecing together information sifted from Noveria, but it looked like Benezia had been quietly routing turian and asari forces through Virmire for almost four years. There could be thousands of supporters remaining.

There was some good news – repairs on the Normandy were almost completed, and her recommendation that Pressly receive command of the ship had been tentatively approved, pending selection of a new XO for the Kazan. The armor on the ship had been reinforced with a thin layer of Silaris plating over the spine and belly thanks to a donation from the asari as a method of thanking the SA, and the sensor suite boasted new technology from the salarians. The SA was planning to use the Normandy as a combined-technology exploration platform and export stealth technology first to the turians and then to the asari and salarians in return for investments in other technologies.

She didn't know if that was smart, or stupid, but she was glad the Normandy wasn't being sent to the breakers after the savage beating it took. She glanced through her last few messages, and was about to send a few when the door chimed.

"Enter!"

The doors slid open, revealing the slender form of Elizabeth Windsor-Turham, wearing a pale gray suit with black trim. "Ah, Major. Welcome back. I trust you find Arcturus well?"

Shepard clicked off the terminal, letting it fold itself back into the desk. "Yeah, thanks. All I've done since I got here is briefings, paperwork, messages, and listening to the Court of Lords act put out I can't have kids."

The younger woman laughed, before pulling a padd out and sobering. "Well, you will find that a large portion of your time will sadly be spent in such endeavors, and few of your conversations with the Lords of Sol will ever end upon a happy note." She met Shepard's gaze. "I hope your training with Admiral Ahern was profitable? He expressed his vast displeasure with certain aspects of how you had been treated to date in...colorful terms to my uncle."

Shepard nodded slowly, internally laughing at the image of Ahern screaming invectives at the President. "Yes, ma'am. I learned...a great deal. Not just about how to fight, but tactics, strategy, a lot of things."

She paused, reflecting, then shook her head. "A lot of things that I should have already known."

Eliza nodded back, smiling. "Excellent, then we can proceed to the next phase."

Shepard folded her arms, leaning back. "Phase of what, exactly? Aside from a very hasty briefing I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to be doing, ma'am."

Eliza sighed. "Which was not, I assure you, my intention. But my uncle is uncertain of events, and he chose to wait until Ahern signed off on your competence in command of your battlegroup before deciding to burden you with more duties. If you had not succeeded, he would have recommended you go through a six month officer training course, alongside your alien crew members." She shrugged. "As that isn't the case, it is time to begin laying out my uncle's longer-term plans for you."

She gestured vaguely in the direction of the door. "You've no doubt noticed the PIA office and addition to your titles. The PIA will be a small unit of ex-AIS operatives who answer directly to you in terms of assisting with whatever requirements my uncle may ask of you, since the AIS is being...reticent at assigning assets directly to your battlegroup. "

Shepard arched an eyebrow and leaned further back in the all-too-comfy chair. "Do I even want to fucking know why I need an entire office of AISholes backing me up?"

Eliza shrugged. "There is a great deal of political maneuvering going on behind the scenes, the bulk of which my uncle feels is of a dangerous bent. While details are sparse at this time, he thinks you having a team of intel specialists may be required. We're still setting things up for that right now – you won't have to worry about that just yet. But we want to have a framework in place for additional assets if need be."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose, and examined Eliza minutely. "That's really vague, ma'am. If the President knows something – "

Eliza held up a delicate hand. "He does not. My uncle is moving off of what can only be called gut instinct at this point. One of his most trusted contacts in the AIS died mysteriously last week, and his personal Commissariat attache was killed in a random street riot two days ago during an investigation of a possible leak in the Office of Presidential Communications."

Shepard shook her head slowly. "He thinks they were assassinated? That someone is, what, taking out his people? And all of this stuff you're having me do is what, a cover?"

The young lady across from her shrugged. "He's unsure, and he would prefer it if chances weren't taken. The time has come to lay our cards, such as they are, on the table – my uncle believes that it is highly likely he will require your services as a Spectre to investigate the human government – and possibly some members of the Council of Lords – shortly. Probably immediately following the resolution of whatever you find regarding this Ylana person."

Shepard grimaced. "Oh, _that_ will be a lot of fucking fun."

Eliza gave a small, mirthless smile. "There have been many actions taken by elements of the SA that do not meet my uncle's approval. He suspects that much of what Major Kyle uncovered may have only been the tip of the iceberg. While the requirement to ensure human survival is important, there are elements of what the initial AIS reports into the information you found in your assault on Cerberus HQ that indicate more…aggressive actions."

Shepard tilted her head. "What could be more _aggressive_ than what they were already doing?"

Eliza tapped her pad. "There were references to code-named operations conducted some time ago, operations that were never signed off on by anyone in power – the monstrous actions involving L2 biotics were just one example. On paper, the SA was supposedly studying the brains of L2 biotic criminals for insights into implant rejection. In practice they were deliberately getting L2 biotics – criminal or not – killed, then harvesting the brains for some kind of neurological extract. This was used in processing L3 phase III biotics in early implant installation, aiding in preventing rejections."

Shepard made a disgusted face. "This is shut down now, right?"

Eliza nodded. "Yes, but the point remains that someone not only initiated this, but constructed large scale facilities to do it and was able to have both AIS and Commissariat assets assist in collection efforts. They were able to build a facility inside our black operations system and yet bypass all of the collective measures put in place to prevent abuses of the SA."

Eliza exhaled. "The only people with the power to do that are the High Lords of Sol. Uncle is certain the House of Windsor had nothing to do with this atrocity. But that means one or more of the other houses did. Without ironclad proof..."

Shepard nodded sourly. "So after I take out this Ylana tramp and deal with whatever stupid the batarians are up to, he wants me to...what?"

Eliza smiled. "Investigate the issue. Your Spectre status, combined with your own noble status, makes you immune to even Commissariat interference. And the cachet of your reputation speaks with its own sort of finality. I'll be sending you files on what we have already compiled so far."

Her smile turned grim. "And once your investigation has identified the people behind them, you will be issued a warrant for their arrest – or execution."

Shepard nodded. "Well, it's about goddamned time."

The young woman set down her pad and gave Shepard a level stare. "However, I would be exceedingly careful in whatever actions you take without very firm proof. There are figures in government right now who are definitely not aligned with the goals of my uncle, men such as Saracino, industrialists like Henry Lawson, and others who are potentially dangerous. This is a highly dangerous set of tasks, Major, and it has already gotten two very experienced people killed. Keep that in mind."

Shepard shrugged. "I haven't actually been asked to do anything yet, ma'am, but I will."

Eliza stood, handing Shepard a pair of OSDs. "These are the case files we've managed to assemble on our most likely targets. Obviously investigating the House of Manswell directly is manifest suicide, but out evidence seems to show that only a minority of the House was involved. Primary involvement seems to be centered around the Houses of Setras and Simons, and with the Second Rank Houses of Minsta, Martinal-Lawson, and Branson."

Eliza folded her arms. "You're already familiar with the antics of Rear Admiral Branson, and there is a multitude of evidence that younger son of the House of Minsta was involved heavily with Cerberus. Beyond that, all we have is guesswork."

Shepard took the OSDs, wondering if she should perhaps start a collection of the discs with horrific shit on them. "I'll keep that in mind."

Eliza nodded. "In that case, enjoy your leave. I am afraid I won't be able to attend the wedding – Daddy is recalling me to London for some dreadfully boring social event – but my uncle wished me to convey his regards and sent you a gift. General von Grath will give it to you."

Shepard smiled. "Thank you, ma'am."

Eliza gave a short bow, departing as she came, and Shepard exhaled, looking over the two OSDs. "Goddamn it, why can't anything be simple?"

**O-ATTWN-O**

It was almost five in the evening when she finally tore free of reviewing files and other administriva and made her way to Aethtya's apartment. As expected, the OSDs were chock-full of shit that made her want to take a flamethrower to elements of her government. While most of it was, as Eliza had said, conjectural, and while she wasn't the most versed on finances and all of that, even with her limited education she could see there were big problems.

The most damning thing on the OSD, of course, was the fragmentary evidence that the AIS had been heavily investigating Major Kyle not long before his little suicide act. In particular, the AIS had arrested a couple of House Kyle Knights Irregular – and executed them, something that could only be done with permission from the Court of Lords. When Kyle and his wife had protested the acts they had been threatened with a Commissar, who had warned them of 'unpatriotic acts'.

Kyle, the Lion of Mindoir, accused of unpatriotic acts. Shepard was torn between spitting and rolling her eyes.

Pushing the thoughts out of her head, she focused instead on what was to come. She comm-linked Liara on the way towards Aethyta's apartment, only to discover that Liara was already there and waiting, along with Anderson.

The asari matriarch had decided to stay a while on Arcturus, namely to be closer to Liara. While not a citizen of the SA and unable to purchase much of anything, she was able to get a long-duration visitation visa. Liara, being a citizen, had gotten her a comfortable apartment in Arcturus' Sphere before shipping out, and this is where Shepard found herself.

The apartment complex was concave, curving with the walls of the Sphere, and inside was a mix of faux wood paneling and tan ceramic flow-tile. Aethyta had a ground-floor space overlooking the natural park area, and Shepard walked into the living area warily.

The room was simply decorated – flat gray carpeting and darker gray walls, simple flat-black couches flanking a haptic vidscreen, a flat-topped walnut bar flanking an open kitchen area, and doors leading to a bedroom and bathroom. Anderson himself was on one of the couches, Liara the other. A few boxes still bulked in a corner, but much of the place looked finished.

Shepard took another glance around as she stepped into the room. The far wall was dominated by a weapons rack, containing a long, serrated warp sword and two smaller short-sword like implements, an asari battle rifle, and what looked like a batarian constriction gauntlet. A few rugs were lain here and there, and the kitchen area revealed the form of Matriarch Aethyta, clad in a shimmer silk jumpsuit and fiddling with some kind of seafood.

The ancient asari glanced up. "Bout fucking time you got here."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Sorry. Paperwork."

Liara smiled and almost shyly hugged Shepard as she got closer, before biting her lip and sitting down. Shepard felt a jumble of jangled emotions from Liara – nervousness, excitement, worry, smug satisfaction – and the combination made her smile helplessly.

She sat next to her, glancing across at Anderson, who had a gentle smile on his own face. "Hey."

His rough voice broke into a short laugh. "Hey, yourself. How was your first day as a big shot battlegroup CO?"

She rubbed her temples. "It was mostly ugh, mixed with arrgh and a dash of 'what the fuck does that even mean', but I got through it." She leaned back, unfastening her uniform collar. "I have decided that I hate paperwork with a passion, but BuShips paperwork is the absolute worst."

Anderson grinned. "Well, Sara, that's what happens when you get into the big leagues." He gave an absolutely delighted laugh. "Then again, you've been promoted further than I have."

She nodded sourly. "It's so _weird_, outranking you. The very concept is fucking retarded. Has Udina given you anything to do yet?"

Anderson picked up his glass of scotch from the small table between the sofas. "No, not really. Right now he's busy playing politics with the rest of the Council and trying to keep the Coleman administration from doing anything too stupid. I've had a few briefings with BuPers over the next possible Spectre selection, but right now it is just sifting through possible candidates." He drank and set his glass back down. "Kahlee has been running back and forth between the Citadel and Grissom Academy, and she's at the hotel taking a nap – she's pretty run down."

Shepard nodded. As she did so, Aethyta came into the room, carrying a platter of some sort of seafood along with Terran shrimp. "Babe, you want anything to drink?"

Shepard glanced up. "Yes, please, God yes. A scotch."

Aethyta snorted and walked over to the bar, pulling open a cabinet beneath it, as Liara leaned forward to examine the seafood. "Aithntar, is that blackfin?"

The matriarch stood, bringing over a bottle and second glass, sitting next to Anderson and pouring. "Yep. Goddess only knows what the deeps humans are doing eating salarian fish, but hey..."

Shepard sat back, letting Liara pick over the seafood. "So...what's up?"

Anderson leaned forward. "With the exception of Mr. Vakarian and his lady friend, everyone invited to your wedding is here, and from what I understand Garrus is going to get here tonight. The von Graths have graciously allowed us to use their compound for the wedding, and so far not a whisper of it has gotten out to the media."

He took a drink. "We've scheduled it – the wedding – for the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow, you will be having an interview with Emily Wong from the ANN, and among other things you'll let her know about the wedding."

Shepard nodded. "I remember her...from the Citadel." She ran her fingers through her hair. "I hope this doesn't turn into a clusterfuck."

Anderson nodded. "She's not a hack like that al-Jiliani woman. Still, formally announcing the wedding is going to set off a firestorm, so the interview will be in the evening, and the wedding the morning after that."

Aethyta finished nibbling on a piece of fish and fixed Liara and Shepard with a hard stare. "I've gotten everything handled for the ceremony itself. The human Commissars are sending something they call a War-Priest to handle the religious aspects of it, from the human side of things. If you want an Athamist to say something, Little Wing, one of the Vasir tagging along is with the Temple."

Liara hesitated, then shook her head. "I … I do not think that would be wise, given Mother's connection to the temple."

Aethyta shrugged. "It's going to piss off people back home either way you go, hon. But no biggie. The ceremony itself is simple. Exchange of vows – just repeat after the priest – and then laying the cords. Shepard, you need to pick someone to tie them for you and Liara – someone you trust as a friend and someone who can tie fucking knots."

Anderson interjected. "It's something akin to a best man in a human wedding, I think."

Aethyta rolled her eyes. "Anyway, you get tied, your dad and I try to pull you two apart, and when that doesn't happen you're bonded. You spend the entire day that way, using your bond to help you to handle things together – undressing is a real blast – and then at sundown we cut the cords and make them into bracelets."

Liara smiled. "What cords have you chosen?"

The matriarch shrugged. "The colors of the House – yellow and pale gray. Shepard's own colors – blood red and black. The symbol chosen was the nexa beast."

Liara smothered a grin at Shepard's perplexity. "The nexa is the most fearsome of the sea-life in Thessia's oceans – nearly unkillable, with a propensity for being overprotective of its young and territory. It is a symbol of possessive protectiveness and determination."

Shepard blinked. "...sure. Let's go with that. So what actually happens at the wedding? I've never been to a human one, either, you know."

Anderson nodded a touch sadly. "Yes, well.. mostly just eating, drinking, talking with your guests. Dancing." His face twitched into a grin at that. "Just a bit of warning, Joker already told me he's going to be recording you if there is dancing."

Shepard sighed. "Why didn't I leave his ass on the Normandy again?"

Liara laughed, and they spent a good hour going over details of how the wedding would proceed, before Anderson sat back and looked at the two of them. "And how are you handling this? It's usually a big day for most people."

Shepard had leaned back and had one arm around Liara, and she closed her eyes to gather her thoughts. "It's … strange. Part of me is delighted and happy. Part of me is a little angry we don't have a choice. I want … " She trailed off, and Liara gently nudged her with her elbow.

Aethyta could not help but smile as Liara urged Shepard to speak. The closeness they had reminded her of her own time with Nezzy.

Shepard gave an exasperated huff. "I don't know, okay? I'm all over the place and maybe once this thing is over and we're sitting down somewhere I can work through it in my head." She sighed. "I got a lot of heavy crap dropped on me today, and I'm sorting through it all mentally."

Anderson lifted his glass. "Worry later, Sara." He was about to drink when his omni-tool chimed, and he glanced at it, frowning. "...huh. Just got a comm-link from Udina. He's actually coming to the wedding. I'm astonished."

Shepard blinked, then smothered a grin.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The day before the wedding was, in short, hectic. Shepard and Liara spent the morning greeting people as they came in from travel, and preparing for the wedding as they could.

Her first stop, of course, was a smallish hotel near the docks, where she met up with Wrex, Dunn, and Jackson.

The three of them were in one room – it was clear that neither Dunn nor Jackson had much money to spend on a fancy hotel, while Wrex was merely cheap – playing poker when she knocked on the door, Liara in tow. Dunn answered, and laughed when he saw Shepard.

"She-bitch!"

She rolled her eyes and punched him the stomach, making him half bend over. "Out of the way, jackass, I didn't come to see you." She shoved past him, into the hotel room, and smiled when she saw Jackson sitting next to Wrex.

The man was still big, but looked almost weathered away – his bleached almost white and now down past his shoulders, his face all hard planes and angles with scars on both cheeks, lips chapped and cracked – but his pale blue eyes were the same, and they filled with happiness as he saw her and stood.

"Hello, Shepard."

She felt suddenly self-conscious, but didn't let her smile falter, and crossed the room to hug him tightly. "Hey, Baby Blue." His arms wrapped around her in a crushing embrace and for a moment a large part of her old pains seemed to wash away.

Dunn grunted. "I never got a hug."

In nearly unison, Wrex, Liara, Shepard and Jackson all spoke. "That's because you're an asshole."

Dunn sighed, turning to Liara. "How's it going, doc?"

Liara smiled at Dunn, even as Shepard broke her embrace with her old teammate. "I am well, Mr. Dunn." She paused. "I have to thank you for the conversation you had with me, and the things you said. If not for you words, I might have let things progress in a different direction...to my detriment, and to Sara's."

Dunn shrugged, lowering his voice as Shepard and Wrex did their usual stare-down. "Listen, I don't know you very well, but I know Sara. If _anyone_ could help her it would have to be someone who would get inside her bullshit." He glanced over at Shepard again. "She looks fucking alive, doc."

Liara smiled. "She is. I worry that I am not doing enough for her, though."

Dunn snorted. "She's a big girl. And sooner or later, if she doesn't get off this self-pity woe-is-me bullshit, it's going to drag her down. The fuck does she have to be depressed about anymore, anyway? She is the biggest goddamned hero in the SA, and nobility! There are little kids wanting to be like Shepard when they grow up, which is such a fucked-up concept that I can barely stop laughing."

Shepard, meanwhile, was talking with Jackson, listening to his stories of living on Tuchanka. "Why there, Dave? Why a place like that?"

The big man sighed. "The SA made it clear to us that our walking away from the team was not acceptable. No matter what, we were all still Z's to them, and a bullet in the head was a distinct possibility. Dunn … I don't know how he got out of it the way he did – from what he tells me, his taking up jobs with Cerberus got him off the hook. For Shields it was much harder, and while she was only a Z1 that is still an ugly thing to carry over your head."

He leaned back in his chair, glancing at Wrex. "When this one came along looking for mercenary backup to help him keep an eye on Urv, I came along. And along the way I fell in with a krogan shaman who was able to give me more guidance in controlling my rages than any human doctor or medicine."

He sighed bitterly. "I wasn't there when Wrex and Urv were ambushed, if I had been – "

The krogan interrupted. "Then you'd be dead. The Ganar were too much that day."

Shepard grimaced. "I promised Wrex on my blood that we'd find the Ganar clanleader, Okeer, and skin the fucker alive. You in?"

Jackson nodded solemnly. "I am."

Dunn walked over, finishing his conversation with Liara. "Yeah, yeah. Anyway, not that I minded getting out of Commissariat hands – creepy assholes – but Wrex and Jackson here won't tell me why the _fuck_ I'm even here or what's going on."

She glanced at Wrex. "You didn't tell him yet?"

The krogan grinned. "Figured you should do it."

She sighed. "I'm getting married to Liara tomorrow, and you are invited, Jason."

The man blinked, then his face split in an honest, happy grin. "Well, damn, She-bitch. Congrats." He glanced over at Liara then back at Shepard, opening his mouth to speak, and then Jackson slapped him in the back of the head. "WHAT?"

The big man merely shrugged. "I'm stopping you from saying something stupid or dickish before you start."

"I didn't even say anything yet!"

Wrex merely picked up a cup of jaaki from the table, sipping calmly. "Do you have any friends who aren't crazy, Shepard?"

Shepard sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I'm beginning to wonder that myself."

**O-ATTWN-O**

After short meetings with a few other guests – Liara's professor, a wonderfully kind older asari matron who impulsively hugged Liara and then looked mortified as the lack of respect; Garrus and Telanya, who were arguing over what hotel to pick and told Shepard they were getting married soon themselves; and a quick visit with General von Grath, who was genially amused as usual and again inquired into what they were wearing – Shepard and Liara ended up eating lunch in a small restaurant not far from the Alliance Congress Building.

It was there that Aethyta finally caught up with them, dressed in a somewhat tight-fitting dress that emphasized her curves a bit too much for Shepard's comfort. "Been looking all over for you two."

Liara was eating seafood, while Shepard picked halfheartedly at a salad. "Sorry, we've been saying hi to people who came out for this thing. What's up?"

Aethyta plopped into a seat next to them, waving away a hovering waiter. "Last minute preparations, mostly." She glanced at Liara. "You know that Matriarch Uressa will be attending, right? She wants to meet Liara."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Any idea why?"

Aethyta's expression darkened. "The Council of Bitchtriarchs isn't happy about Liara being in the SA and not returning home." She snorted. "So one reason Uressa decided to come along is to soften the blow of what Liara's going to be told. Not everyone on the Council agrees with what was decided, but it was pretty much just a few who opposed it."

Liara sighed sadly. "I did not expect my actions in joining the SA formally to be taken well...but this is my home now. The Systems Alliance has treated me far more fairly and kindly than the Republic ever did, and their researchers into Prothean studies encourage me to continue my work rather than ridicule it."

Aethyta shrugged. "You don't really think I'd have a problem with this, do you? Look, kiddo. You've been making your own way in this stupid damned galaxy for the past fifty years, and no matter what anyone things I'm damned proud of you. Thana can go suck on a plasma conduit for all I care – if you are happy, if you're safe, then that's all I need."

Shepard shrugged. "So this … Uressa … wants to see Liara? Or me, too?"

Aethyta shrugged. "You two are kind of a package deal, I figure. Besides, I did a little bit of shopping today, and while we're at the hotel I can show you two what you're wearing."

Shepard blinked. "I, ah, assumed I'd just go in full dress..."

Aethyta grinned. "Just let me show you what I got before you commit to that."

**O-ATTWN-O**

The trip to the Four Seasons of Arcturus – a large and fancy hotel, which was swarming with asari huntresses and a handful of war priestesses – was mostly done in silence, and once the three of them got out of the car, they were hardly surprised to be met by asari commandos in service with House T'Shora. They were politely escorted into the lavish hotel lobby, which wasn't much different than the one Shepard had seen on Noveria.

"Pretty swanky place. This T'Shora much be rich." Shepard noted quietly, and Aethyta snorted.

"The Vasir matriarch – my sister – and the T'Soni matriarch went in with her in renting the top floor. And yeah, the T'Soni may seem rich to you, but House T'Shora owns entire worlds. She could probably buy this place outright."

On the top floor, they were ushered into a large suite, where Uressa T'Shora sat chatting politely with Matriarch Suliesa T'Soni and Matriarch Uthana Vasir. The three matriarchs reclined asari style on shallow couches around a long board filled with various snacks, decanters of ice-wine, and haptic display pads.

While the Vasir and T'Soni matriarch were dressed plainly – flat black robes and shawls – Uressa wore a simple white gown, with a pale blue shawl over her shoulders that gave her an air of simplicity and somehow youth. Shepard realized her impressions were stupidly off when she met the matriarch's eyes – while kinder than any other asari she'd seen, there was an age in them that made Shepard feel abruptly young and stupid.

Liara stopped, fumbling for a ritual greeting, and Uthana Vasir merely rolled her eyes. "Goddess drown me, girl. I've known you since you were a baby and so has Sully. Stop stammering and get over here, we didn't call you up to hear the Fifty Invocations of Greeting."

Shepard coughed away her amusement, pausing to examine the reclining form of Uressa in more detail. The asari matriarch was blindingly beautiful, in a way that made even Liara look almost plain by comparison.

As Liara walked closer, the Vasir matriarch turned to Shepard. "And don't just stand there like a gapefish, human. Introduce yourself."

Shepard smiled. She thought for a moment, wondering how exactly to do that, then bowed to the three ancient asari. "Thank you for coming to the wedding. I am Sara Shepard. There's a bunch of other titles, but they don't really matter to me except for one. I am Liara's bondmate."

Matriarch Suliesa gave a crow of laughter. "Good answer, Shepard. You already know me. The dried up old kelp next to me is Uthana Vasir, matriarch of House Vasir. And over there is Matriarch Uressa T'Shora, second-borne to the Line of Athame, glorious intercessor to the ancestors, blah blah blah."

Uressa's lips quirked into amusement while Vasir spluttered. "I see you are still competing with our dear Aethyta for being the most unconventional of us, Rain-dancer."

Aethyta snorted. "She's got a long way to go."

Uthana Vasir nodded sourly, even as she examined Liara minutely. "Remind me again why Thana is so terrified of this girl, Uressa. She looks like a temi-fish, not a relli." Shepard vaguely recalled the temi-fish as a very harmless and small bottom feeding fish, while the relli was a horrifically poisonous water snake.

Uressa smiled gently, her voice soft and comforting. "Because Sea Lily is by nature a cautious and untrusting person, Uthana." She tilted her head. "Be welcome, both of you. As my friend said, I am Matriarch Uressa. I am here to represent the House of Storm, Liara, and to personally congratulate you on a love-bonding."

Liara flushed, but bowed deeply. "I am honored by your presence, Matriarch Uressa."

Uressa languidly gestured to the low reclining couches in the room, and Liara reclined on one. Shepard frowned and sat human-style on another, elbows on knees. The stance made Suliesa snort.

"Let's stop piddling about in the shallows and speak plainly. As of the last meeting of the Council of Matriarchs, where we let them know you and Shepard were getting married, the decision was carried to the Justicars to cease hounding you, Liara. Assuming you actually go through with this, you won't be in trouble in that regard."

Suliesa gave Aethyta a hostile glance. "However, the Matriarchy also made it clear that you have chosen humanity over asari and given oaths, and as such you are not to return to asari space, and if you do, you will still have to submit to the question. Furthermore, they have decided you cannot be Matria of House T'Soni."

Liara took this calmly enough, but Shepard got angry. "What? Why in the hell would they do that? Not to be a depressive bitch, but I'm human and I won't live very long compared to Liara. She's banned for hundreds of years because of me?"

Uthana Vasir glared at Suliesa. "Not because of you, girl-child. The Justicars actually approve of you – the little we have heard suggests that the main reason they didn't act immediately is that they could not imagine you actually coddling a criminal or anyone in league with Saren. And while there are those who don't feel a member of the Thirty should mingle with just anyone, you are hardly that. You are nobility, clearly in the favor of your people – and you stood up to one of our strongest. This is not about you at all."

Aethyta nodded to that. "There are other tides driving this decision, as stupid as it is. Nezzy's Triune held great power and influence in asari culture, as did Nezzy herself. There were millions of asari followers of the Triune who, even if they took no part in her crimes, would still revere her daughter's words."

Uressa nodded. "And in addition to this, Lady Sara, there are the more ugly and cutting truths – that the Council of Matriarchs is dismayed at the level of asari immigration to the Systems Alliance, and feels Liara would be a rallying point for this."

Liara blinked, several times, then sighed. "Oh. They worry I will be some influence upon the Exodus...because of my mother's connection to Trellani."

Uressa nodded, and Liara's shoulders slumped. The asari matriarch gently touched Liara's hand. "Do not fret so. There are those who sharply disagree with the ideals and words of the queen matriarch on this issue, and others who simply are acting as they due out of inertia. It is for this very reason that I am here – you are neither abandoned nor unwanted."

Suliesa nodded. "That's truth, Little Wing. House T'Soni will always stand with you."

Uthana sighed. "Given that you are my niece, Liara, do not expect Vasir to abandon you either. But this hostility towards Aethyta should stop."

Before Suliesa could open her mouth, Aethyta held up a hand. "Let's not go there. Sully has _every_ damned right to hate my guts. If I hadn't been what the humans call 'chickenshit', so much of this entire mess could have been avoided." She sighed. "That doesn't mean I am going to not play a part in Liara's life, though. If the cost of that is having people scowl at me..."

Suliesa leaned back, running her hand over her crests. "It's a moot point now. If she's actually going to bother to be a part of Little Wing's life and not run all over Council space getting smashed, I can tolerate her." She turned to Liara. "Just keep in mind what I said, dear."

Liara nodded slowly. "... I will. Was that all?" Shepard frowned at the emotional deadness in Liara's voice, but said nothing.

Uressa shook her head slowly. "There is one more thing. I am concerned about this bonding – you are very young to be doing such a thing, Liara."

Shepard sighed. "That's more of my fault than anything."

Uressa raised a slender, delicate hand. "I do not speak of faults or dangers in an attempt to criticize. You are a beautiful match, one that from what little I have heard seems fated by Athame herself, and little can be gained in life without sacrifices of one sort or another. I merely worry that Liara is going to be put under a great deal of pressure."

A part of Shepard's mind almost gleefully laughed at that phrase, given what they got up to in the bedroom. The faint purpling of Liara's cheeks indicated she was probably thinking the same thing, as well as the swell of mortified amusement. Shepard merely sighed instead. "I've been doing my reading and I know it's not conventional. But this is being driven by events out of my hands. Due to things that happened to me in the chase for Saren, we're...kind of stuck like this."

Uressa fixed Shepard with her brilliant sapphire stare. "And if events end up with her dealing with a maiden pregnancy?"

Shepard clenched a fist slowly. "When and if that happens, I'll resign my commissions in the SA, give up being a Spectre, and move us to Watson to be near asari specialists." She shrugged. "There isn't **anything** more important in my life than Liara. Now, tomorrow, next year, _next decade_."

Aethyta snorted. "Told you."

Uressa nodded serenely. "You must understand, Lady Sara, that I do not question this out of anything political, or to bring up traditions or any other such harmful thing. I merely worry Liara is feeling as if she must do this due to a lack of choices."

Liara spoke calmly. "Matriarch Uressa...in some ways, you are correct. I do have little if any choice in this, but not for the reasons you may think. Sara sacrificed deeply of herself in stopping Saren, taking on the full and direct brunt of a Dark Beacon not once but twice. Given the privation inflicted upon her in the past, and the stresses she was under, the only method capable of stabilizing her was for me to attempt to help her absorb the memories."

She lifted her chin. "I will not deny I was attracted to her from the moment she saved my life. She has done so more than once, set aside her own health and well-being to protect me, and offered me love and acceptance that I simply did not find at home. Without me, she will slowly go insane, and I fear that without me there to support her, the pressures she herself faces will be too much to bear even if her mind was whole."

She turned to look at Sara, and smile. "If I am trapped, Matriarch, it is a snare of my own making – one of love, of duty, of gratitude. The bonding was something I initiated, and it is something I wanted and pursued. If that makes me unwise...well, I am a maiden, after all."

The last, said with self-depreciating humor, left both of the Vasir snickering. Suliesa merely sighed, while Uressa was silent a long moment before nodding slowly.

"Well said, Lady Liara. I will say this – Lady Sara is not the first to experience the mind-darkening damage of a Dark Beacon, and there are those high in Athame's temple who can cure such afflictions more permanently. But if you truly feel this is your path, then far be it from me to dissuade you. House T'Shora will stand with you tomorrow, under the eyes of the Galaxy, and if any dislike what you will do, they will answer to me as did the turians at the end of the First Contact War."

Liara bowed. "My eternal gratitude, Matriarch." She gave a shaky exhale, and Shepard placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"I'm still not happy about Liara being unwelcome in Asari space. When you return, can you tell Matriarch Thana something for me, ma'am?"

Uressa's lips curved into a gentle smile. "I suspect this will not be a polite communication?"

Shepard laughed. "No. Tell her that I said I never expected the queen of the asari to be a petulant child, or to scapegoat the innocent. I won't forget this bullshit."

Aethyta burst into laughter. "Oh, she'll hate you forever."

Uressa shrugged casually. "I will convey your disagreement to her, Lady Sara." She picked up her glass of ice-wine, sipping it before inclining her head. "No doubt you two have additional things you must attend to before the ceremony. I thank you for granting me your time."

Liara smiled and bowed. "The honor is mine, Matriarch. May Athame light your paths."

After a few minutes of saying their farewells, Liara and Shepard were about to head off when Aethyta stopped them. "Not yet. You need to come to my apartment first, I need to show you some stuff."

Shepard shrugged, and gestured to the elevator."I have an air-car."

It took a good ten minutes to drive to the apartments, where Aethyta quickly hustled them inside. Inside, she moved them to another room, a bedroom from the looks of it, where an assortment of shopping bags laid.

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "You went shopping? I'm not wearing a wedding dress, Aethyta."

The older asari grinned. "I'm not much for fancy dresses or anything like that, but I do plan to send a little message with what I have picked out for Little Wing to wear. I don't think you going in uniform is going to be a problem, but Liara needs to wear something else."

Liara folded her arms. "I am _not_ wearing the traditional bonding outfit, aithntar." She shook her head. "While I am not ashamed of my body, humans do not react the same way."

Aethyta nodded. "Pack of tight-asses. But that wasn't my idea anyway, girl. I had to argue with Suliesa for this, but she ended up agreeing." She pulled out a few things from the largest of the sacks, and Shepard narrowed her eyes.

Liara's mouth fell open. "This is the regalia of a Matriarch!"

Aethyta nodded, pulling aside another bag to reveal the mirror-finished carrying case of the T'Soni family warp sword. "Yes, it is. Shepard will probably need to go in full dress uniform, but I got an honor sash from House Vasir."

Shepard nodded hesitantly, while Liara frowned at the mantle, rich long yellow dress, and shawl her mother once wore. "What exactly is an honor sash?"

Aethyta pulled out a long, intricate silk sash, a deep brown in color with subtle highlights of the spear and wave sigil of the Vasir on it, the edges fringed with pearl-thread in a thousand gradations of browns, tans, and golds. "It's an award, basically. It says you did something on behalf of the Family that we couldn't, and that we owe you." Her eyes grew dark with pain. "I couldn't stop Benezia, and if it hadn't been for your actions, Shepard, none of us would be here."

She glanced at Liara. "And you are going as Lady Liara T'Soni, rightful matria of the House, and Thana can go walk into the fucking sea for all I care."

Liara fingered the cloth hesitantly, a strange expression on her features. "I see." She exhaled. "I do not want to cause friction..."

Shepard snorted. "Liara – this isn't about _them_. It's about you, and what you want. Pretending you don't exist is the shit they've been pulling on you all your life. Thumbing your nose at them might actually feel good, you know?"

Liara blinked. "Thumbing … what?"

Shepard sighed.

**O-ATTWN-O**

About twenty minutes before seven PM, after a full day of running about, a quick walk-through of what to expect in the ceremony, and a very nervous request to General von Grath to act as the person binding her and Liara's cords, Shepard found herself at the ANN studio, biting her lip and fiddling with her uniform.

She took a deep breath and stepped inside, forcing a smile at the receptionist at the front desk. "I was told to come here to meet with Emily Wong."

The receptionist, a younger woman with flat black hair and overdone makeup, gave her a brilliant smile, standing up. "Oh, yes! Baroness Shepard. Of course. She's in studio A, I'll guide you there! VI, watch the desk!"

Following the young woman, Shepard was bombarded by a breathy sort of interrogation as to how she liked Arcturus, if she was excited about the fact that the SA gravball team beat the turians, and curiosity of what she had been doing. Managing to extricate herself from any tricky questions, she was actually glad when the woman deposited her at a sturdy metallic door heavily embossed with the words "STD A" on it.

Haptic signs edged the door – "SILENCE IS GOLDEN – INTERVIEW IN PROGRESS", but the girl merely touched a control and the door opened. "Here you go."

Shepard stepped in, glancing around. The room was a bit spacious, half of it done in concrete and flat gray paneling, the other half taken up a by a raised, wooden platform. A backdrop of the Vancouver skyline was matte-painted on a curved wall behind it, with haptic projections of small ships displayed on it, along with the ANN logo. In front of it was a pair of comfortable looking chairs, a small table with two glasses of water, and a large, elaborate SA rug between the chairs.

Off to one side was a very brightly lit niche filled with mirrors and a high chair, where Emily Wong was being touched up by a makeup specialist. Cameras on heavy mounts bulked to the right or hung from overhead poles, and about ten people milled about, some fiddling with cameras, others on padds.

A slender, almost delicate looking man smiled as she entered. "Ah, Baroness. Welcome. Please follow me." She did so, as the man lead her to another brightly lit niche, where he had her sit on the raised seat in front of the mirrors. "I am Phillipe, and I will do what we call a facial prep for your interview. A small amount of special makeup, perhaps a gloss...and a touch up of your hair. Is that acceptable, milady?"

She shrugged. While she wasn't completely inept in personal care, she'd simply not been interested in her appearance for years. Being raised in slave quarters, gangs and cruelly impersonal boot camps did that do you. "Can't hurt."

With a sketched bow, he began, lightly running a brush over her cheeks, using some kind of very thin paste. He touched up her lips with a gloss of some kind, before carefully spraying her hair with something, combing it back with smooth, gentle strokes and frowning a bit.

After five minutes, he nodded, and she glanced in the mirror. She found herself surprised. The shallowness of her cheeks looked gone, as did the darkness of her eyes, lightened by some kind of glaze of makeup. Her hair, usually lankly falling around her face, was smooth and evenly combed and while still hanging down, looked more styled and less limp.

She smirked, nodding at the man. "Thank you."

He shrugged. "It is easy to touch up divine beauty such as yours, milady."

She rolled her eyes, but stepped off the chair and looked around, as Emily Wong approached. "Hello, Baroness Shepard."

Shepard shook her head sighing. "I am never going to get used to that. So...here I am."

Wong nodded. "Yes. I want to thank you for agreeing to this...your dislike of the media is pretty firm, and you've never done much of a real interview except that one where you completely made al-Jiliani look like a fool." She smiled, Asiatic features crinkling in pleasure. "I'll try not to piss you off."

Shepard nodded. "Alright. Just don't ask me questions about the Battle of Torfan, or anything about Major Kyle, please."

Wong nodded again. "That wasn't something I would do anyway, Baroness." She gestured to the stage. "It's about time...after you."

Shepard walked onto the stage, aware of the multitude of cameras swinging into place to face her._ Stay calm, think of something nice, do not punch out the camera drones._

Sitting carefully, she lifted her chin, as Wong sat across from her, examining a padd on her lap. She glanced over to a man by one of the cameras, who held up a finger.

"One minute, Baroness, until we start. Captain Anderson was incredibly cagey about what you wanted this interview for, only that you had an announcement to make. Will you do that first?"

Shepard sighed and nodded. "Sure."

Wong smiled. "Relax. I promise to be gentle."

Shepard managed to laugh. "That's what the drill instructors said."

The man by the camera slashed a hand, and Wong's face slipped into a professional mask. Five seconds later, she turned slightly to face a camera. "Good evening. I'm Emily Wong, with Alliance News Network, and this is the Evening Talk."

"Tonight we have an extremely honored guest, a person who not only has been critical in recent galactic affairs, but who is one of the most inspiring people in the Systems Alliance. It is with great pleasure that I wish to introduce Baroness Sara Ying Shepard, Knight Protector of the Knights of United Earth, Major-Commander of the Systems Alliance Battlegroup Chiron, and humanity's first Spectre. Welcome, milady."

Shepard took a deep breath and nodded. "I am glad to be here, Ms. Wong."

Emily leaned back slightly. "I am sure that there are many questions people would like to ask you, but before we get started in the interview properly, I understand you wish to make an announcement?"

Shepard nodded, turning to face the camera. "Yes, I would. I understand these sorts of things are usually done somewhat differently, but I would rather just get it out of the way. Tomorrow morning, at 9 AM upon the estates of House von Grath, I will be entering into marriage with Lady Liara T'Soni, chatelaine of House T'Soni Outrier."

The poleaxed expression on Wong's face almost made the trouble this was going to cause worthwhile.


	20. Chapter 20 : Processional of Blades

_**A/N:** I'll go ahead and admit I'm a bad person with these verbal cliffhangers. But this is really the first place where you will begin to see how events earlier in the series came about to begin with, and it was such a good place to stop (just short of the 10k word count) that I couldn't resist.  
_

_So far, people seem to like what is going down, so I extended this chapter quite a bit._

_The War-Priest is a mix of several things, but the major influence is (of course) Warhammer 40k. Some pieces later on in the story were pretty much lifted wholesale from my other work - 'The best father a girl could wish for' - since that particular conversation will not be happening in my version. _

_Here is hoping you enjoy it. Things get a bit darker not too long from now, so be ready. _

_Tidbits: _Atramentous _is a word meaning 'ink-like shadow', I believe. _

* * *

_'The wedding? Oh god. The best part had to have been when Sara and Liara got completely smashed and tried to dance. They actually had to call for medics because someone hurt themselves laughing. They definately had moved I'd never seen before.' - Commodore Jeffrey'Zorah vas Normandy, 'Don't Hate, Appreciate : The memoirs of a pilot'  
_

* * *

The morning of Shepard's wedding, Beatrice Shields awoke from a hazy and nightmare filled sleep, groaning as the hangover from drinking herself unconscious after watching ANN Nightly News struck her like an avalanche.

She sat up blearily, pushing raven hair out of her face, grimacing. All the cyberware she had in her made her feel constantly cold, and so she ended up sleeping in heavy sweats and thick tops, which in turn left her hot and sweaty in the morning.

Given that she'd drank enough tequila to down a pair of marines last night, she now also stank. Sighing, she staggered to her feet, her cybernetic gyros auto-correcting her stagger in a way that made her vision swim even more.

The apartment she lived in on the Citadel was fairly small, not because the Broker was cheap, but because she liked small places. She'd brightened it up as she could – small shelves on every wall held tiny flowerpots with small bright flowers or sweet-smelling herbs, pictures of her time in the Marines were hung from walls in thin black frames, and her gun collection dominated the living room, along with her awards from Exogeni.

Her bathroom was tiny, a strip of black tiling between a shower pod, a narrow toilet, and a steel sink and mirror with some shelving to either side. Dropping her sweats in the omnicycler, she stripped naked, pausing to gaze sadly at her mutilated body in the mirror.

Her right arm, left leg, and parts of her back gleamed with black metal, as did a segment of her left shoulder. More cyberware traced an ugly strip around her right eye and temple, the hair having finally mostly grown back to cover the ugly operation scars. More such stars, angry red against the paleness of her skin, showed where her very guts had been taken apart and filled with machinery.

_42%._

An ugly, sickening number that she lived with every day. At 42% she was a 'cybernetically impaired person", someone who had to spend money on anti-rejection drugs and neural stabilizing treatments for the rest of their life, who had to deal with taking chemo to derail cancers one month out of every year.

For what?

She sighed, slipping into the shower, pouring body gel over her skin and letting hot water pound against her as she tried and failed not to think. Not to think about her fucked up career, the people she'd known. Her shaky relationship with Aaron and then with Alicia, both out of her life now.

The fact the woman she'd fell in love with years ago was going to marry a _mind-raping alien tramp_ after lying to her face and saying nothing was going on just a few months back.

She rubbed shampoo into her hair, grimacing at the sore areas of her scalp near the cyberware. At least the silver was top of the line and waterproof – the Broker didn't know the meaning of the word 'cheap' when someone worked for him. If not for the Broker, she'd be a real mess now.

Barely able to walk or see, needing blood filtering every week – that would go down real good on any security resume, and what the shit else could she do? She'd never even finished high-school, never made officer in the SA, barely made it to Chief more through her proximity to von Grath's pet psycho than any merits of her own.

It had always rankled, her failures – never hit N7 like the rest of the team, never got awarded much beyond commendations and a single grudging Bronze star. It rankled that Dunn and Jackson would drown in good looking chicks while she struggled with her own Reformed Baptist-Methodist Union of Christ background, and its opposition to same-sex relationships.

And of course, after turning her back on that in shame, she found out the one she'd been interested in wasn't interested back.

She got out of the shower, drying herself off with a thick, fluffy towel, and then spent the next fifteen minutes fixing her hair and putting on fresh clothes – dark black undergarments, a black stretch shirt and black cargo pants, and gray and black armored vest. Tying her hair back in a tight ponytail, she stalked into her kitchen for food, the apartment VI kicking on the lights and the vidscreen on the living room wall.

She heard the droning voice of some newscaster on the morning news. "...reaction still mixed to the announcement last night on ANN by Baroness Sara Shepard of her impending marriage to Dr. Liara T'Soni, a citizen of the SA and one of those influential in stopping Saren..."

She snarled. "VI, kill vidscreen." Silence fell on the room, and she shook her head and pulled open her fridge, looking for something to eat.

"I am acting like a goddamned teenager, for fucks sake." Pulling out eggs and bacon, she got to work, and was finishing up her omelet when her comm panel chimed. "Incoming call. Jason Dunn."

She glanced at it, scowling. "Connect, audio only."

A moment later, Dunn's voice came across the comm. "You would not believe how _hard_ it is to find your fucking number, Bea."

She rolled her eyes. "It's unlisted for a reason, jackass. I don't need fucking reporters asking me shit about Torfan or fucking She-bitch."

He exhaled, sounding tired. "Yeah. Well, I'm sure this won't put me in your good books...but I didn't know until yesterday."

She paused. "Didn't know what, Jase? Them getting married, or them fucking, or what?"

Dunn's voice was calm. "Any of it. I got picked up on the campaign against Cerberus by Shepard and her team, y'know. Way after you ran into her. The conversation I had pretty much ended up with that blue crying about Shepard not letting her close and falling apart, and then She-bitch screaming at me for being a dick to her."

He paused. "Wrex...Wrex told me the marriage is kind of political – the asari really want the T'Soni woman dead cuz of the shit her mother did – some kind of asari cultural crap. That and Sheppy took a great big ol' mindfucking from those Beacons when she was chasing Saren, and T'Soni helps with that."

Shields glared at the comm as she made her omelet. "Dunn, why are you telling me this shit? It's her life, she's an adult. I made it clear what I felt, she didn't feel the same. I helped her team out when I could. We're cool."

Dunn was silent for a couple of seconds. "You don't _sound_ cool, Bea. And if you were cool, you'd be _here_."

She grimaced. "Yeah, well, I didn't get a fucking invite. I think we both know what _that_ means, Jase. And given that it's happening in about an hour, ain't like I'm going to make the trip." She huffed. "I got breakfast to make, I gotta go."

Dunn sighed. "Alright. Just...do me a favor. If you ever felt like we were anything but people shooting at bad guys together, do me one favor."

She paused. "I ain't sleeping with you."

He laughed at that, his voice amused. "That would be _me_ doing _you_ a favor, and never forget it. Remember the Lannigan triplets?"

She rolled her eyes, but her mouth curved in a smile. "Those bitches were sprung for weeks. That just means they weren't pro." She sighed. "What is it?"

Dunn's voice went as serious as she had ever heard it. "I got some…sources. People I know. People that know people, if you take my meaning. Ain't saying names over the public TTL, but … if you hear anybody gunning for Shepard, drop me a line."

She frowned. "And why would I know that?"

Dunn's voice took on a hint of anger. "I'm not stupid, Bea. Like I said, I know people. You didn't get nine million worth of silver outta Cracker Jack boxes, and that company you work for, the volus bank, is a known associate of people who hang out in the dark. I'm not asking you out of anything but simple friendship – She-bitch ALWAYS gets in over her fucking head."

Shields snorted. "Right. They made her a noble and gave her a battle group and let her bang her own pet asari, she's clearly not their favorite."

Dunn coughed. "Don't be any more fucking dense than you have to, girl. You and I know how the SA rolls – we saw it a dozen times even before Torfan. This shit? They're doing this to win her over, make her forgive them."

Shields thought about that. Dunn's words made a very ugly sort of sense. And if Shepard really hadn't been doing anything with the doctor until recently, then she hadn't lied – she might even have been forced into this mess.

"I'll keep an ear out, Jase. But that's all. She gets in trouble again, she's on her fucking own. I got my own shit to sort out."

Dunn laughed. "Maybe. Baby Blue is on Arcturus, by the way – he wants to swing by the Citadel to see you on his way back to Tuchanka after this shindig. Can I give him your number?"

She smiled wider, and laughed. "Yes, you can. I'd be happy to see him. Just not you!"

"You goddamned people can't appreciate my awesome. Fucking philistines. Anyway, I'm out, Bea. Don't get anymore of your fine ass shot off before I see you next."

She snorted and let the call drop, finishing her omelet and eating it slowly. Her head still ached from her drinking and self-pity binge the night before, but some painkillers and turning on the nerve-edit of the cyberware suite she had fixed that up, and after some food she felt human again.

When the comm unit rang the second time, it was a different pattern, and the haptics flashed red. She triggered her omni, kicking off the security shielding for the apartment, and then spoke. "Calibur Disinformation."

"Passphrase correct, Agent Atramentous. Wait for Broker Network connection."

She shrugged, walking into her small living room, and waited for the vidscreen to activate. A moment later the Broker's triangular-maw logo filled it, followed by the image of Tetrimus. "Boss."

The turian gave her a nod. "Your work on Rygenal Corporation's external security was outstanding. The Broker himself was pleased. You've earned a bonus."

She smirked. "I like a bonus. What now?"

Tetrimus gave a flicker of his mandible, barely visible within the shadowy confines of his cowl. "For the most part, continue your operations as Chief of Security for Barla Von Financial Associates. However, we do have a long-term operation about to kick off we'll require your assistance with."

He steepled his clawed fingers, light glinting from metallic edges sunk into the talons. "You are one of the few people who can claim more than passing familiarity with Major Shepard."

She narrowed her eyes, but nodded.

"The Broker has been approached by elements within the Systems Alliance who are, how to put it, concerned about her most recent activities. No doubt they have some stupidly nefarious plot to discredit or even kill her."

Shields felt an ugly, tugging sensation in her stomach. She grit her jaw and spoke. "I'm not happy about her marrying that blue, Boss. But I'm _not_ going to get her killed or fucked over and out."

He nodded. "Nor, I assure you, would that be good business for us. Shepard is likely to be forced to call on our services herself very soon if our suspicions are correct – the only reason the President would elevate her to such heights and have her answer only to him is that he plans some sort of quasi-legal action against his own compatriots. While we have no confirmation of this yet, Shepard will need someone to assist in such if our assumptions are correct."

"At the same time, _Broker Rule number six_: you take their money even if you have no plan of completing the job. The more we know about these disgruntled elements in the SA, the more we can charge Shepard to sell them out down the line. Thus getting paid by her, by them, and winning the gratitude of a Spectre and the SA president."

She rolled her eyes. "You guys plot a bit too much, Boss."

The turian shrugged. "Perhaps. Then again, lack of plotting is why both you and I are almost more metal than flesh, no?"

She shrugged. "Fair enough. What's the actual job?"

The turian displayed a data-file. "Our ability to monitor Shepard is strictly limited, as she is utterly paranoid. Her own quarters on the Kazan are not only sound shielded, but actively blocked with at least five top of the line EM/sensor jammers, and her personal comms tech, one Ensign Traynor, is distressingly good at countering any penetration attempts. On top of that, she has a pair of AIS agents aboard, ostensibly as snipers but secretly acting as adhoc security against agent penetration."

"Her personal life is a void and she has no serial assets of any kind except a house on Inter'sai she recently acquired. Unfortunately, the residence formerly belonged to Admiral Tradius Ahern, a man even more paranoid, and comes with three hardened security bots and its own jamming suite. Thus far, we have been unable to gather intel on her outside of her training sessions."

Tetrimus tilted his head. "We were, however, able to gain a deep spy-beam penetration of Admiral Ahern's office several times, including a conversation where he gave an OSD to Shepard containing what sounded like information highly compromising the SA. The information was supposedly akin to other information Major Kyle gave her slightly before his self-destruction."

Shields grimaced. That had been ugly to watch, and at the time she'd been bewildered by what could have set off Kyle that way. "So, Shepard has some ugly intel. The Broker wants it?"

Tetrimus nodded. "Indeed. Rather than waste time and money attempting to infiltrate and steal the information – a remarkably bad idea given Shepard's lethality in combat and general distrustful demeanor – it would be simpler if, under the guise of proffering Broker assistance, you reach out to her and learn what you can."

Shields sighed, rubbing her neck. "Is this a volunteer job, or am I being volunteered?"

The turian folded his arms. "It is entirely up to you. However, we are prepared to offer significant financial reimbursement, as well as another possibility. I am not unfamiliar with your … personal situation."

He shifted to a different data-slate. "I think this would be of interest, no?"

She read it quickly, and grimaced. "So some of the asari Justicars still want T'Soni dead, bad enough to go to the Broker to see if it can't be done? Ugly." She glanced at Tetrimus. "Killing off the blue is a shitty thing to do to Shepard if she's happy."

Tetrimus shrugged. "I have my doubts anyone in a liaison with an asari is fully acting under their own self-will any longer, Agent. Having seen what our asari agents can accomplish with but a few nights in bed, is it completely unreasonable to assume that Dr. T'Soni, given her dire situation, lack of options, and an excuse to go inside Shepard's head, did not make herself available and perhaps alter things to do that?"

Shields gritted her teeth. "Maybe. You're still suggesting that you'll _kill her wife_, and this is supposed to benefit me. How the _fuck_ am I supposed to go along with that?"

Tetrimus tilted his head. "Are you happy, Agent?"

She exhaled. "I'm doing my job."

Tetrimus trailed a talon across the desk he sat at. "I have not been happy for a long time, since my worthless government betrayed me and got my family killed for events out of my control. I know what it is like to ache after something and be denied. If the Broker decides to take this contract, then you should worry more about how Shepard will endure after the T'Soni woman is dead."

She shook her head. "I'm not having this conversation, boss. I'll reach out to her and see what I can do about what you said, but while I'm not happy about how things ended up, I'm not shallow enough to fucking want the person she's getting married to shot just so I can have a chance." She squared her shoulders. "Clear?"

The turian shrugged. "We'll see, Agent Atramentous, if you stick to that declaration after talking with Shepard. We expect she'll be on Inter'sai at some point after her wedding – there is a flight leaving in four days for the planet, you will fly first class there. Your cover is that you are escorting a representative from Barla Von Financial to the Bank of Manswell-Ashland there, a meeting over a proposed liquidity buyout of some warehousing space designed for hazardous materials."

He clicked a control on his desk. "We will cover all expenses. This is not expected to be a combat operation and no weapons visas will be issued, aside from whatever personal sidearm you wish to carry. Customs has already been handled with a generous contribution."

She snorted. "Fine. I'll be ready to go." She paused. "Anything else?"

The right hand of the Broker shook his head. "Not at this time, Agent. Think about what I said." With that he disconnected.

Shields sighed, and glanced at the clock – time to 'work'. She picked up her shoulder holster and pistol, tucking it under her vest, then a heavy coat emblazoned with the Barla Von logo, before stepping off to her cover job.

**O-ATTWN-O**

"This is … highly irregular."

Alfred von Grath, Duke of Arcturus, General (retired), glanced across the sitting room at his guest, who had lit a Compineros cigarette and was reclining, perfectly at ease.

"I'm aware of that, Your Grace. And yet, you cannot deny that the information I've provided you has been helpful in warding off the actions of both House Coleman and the depredations of the volus banking units against your business. Or that the intercession by my agents saved your grandson's life."

Duke von Grath sighed. "Yes, I will readily admit that. And my gratitude to you runs deeply, especially since you have asked nothing in return until now. Still, this event is … private. And for good reasons. You understand that Shepard may not only refuse to listen to you but literally break your skull?"

Jack Harper chuckled good-naturedly. "I'm sure. I've taken some pains with my appearance so that I don't resemble my true looks, of course, but I don't plan to stay long. I only wish to speak to her, and if she reacts violently, I have made preparations for that possibility. And I give you my word, there is nothing I plan that will blacken your honored name."

The patrician figure standing next to him nodded, his cold blue eyes narrowing behind his glasses. "I add my own name to that promise, Your Grace, and that of House Minsta."

The Duke nodded hesitantly. "Very well, Dr. Minsta. If you promise me that, I can make sure she sees you shortly after the ceremony concludes. Ah, one difficulty – Baroness Shepard will be bound with cords to Lady Liara for the duration of the day. An asari affectation, as I understand. If you meet with her right after the actual wedding, they will be together."

Harper nodded. "That actually works out even better than intended, Your Grace. I think some of what I have to convey will be of interest to Dr. T'Soni as well as Shepard." He dumped ashes from his cigarette into the crystalline ashtray on the setting table, smiling genially. "In return, my associates and I are at your disposal for whatever you need done."

Von Grath grimaced. "I dislike dealing with Cerberus, Mr. Harper."

Harper shrugged. "While I retain the name – Cerberus, after all, was my idea, and an idea is not killed by bullets – I assure you that the vile acts taken by others in my organization are over. They have paid with their lives for going against my principles, and I was instrumental in ensuring they were punished for it. Besides, I have folded many of my assets into new front companies – my assistance can be perfectly legal and above board."

He gestured at the folder he'd deposited on the table earlier. "For instance, the design for the next phase of infantry mechs, code-named LOKI – a tremendous improvement on the old AESIR mech. We already have pre-orders of several hundred thousand units from outlying Class I colonies, but we would need a second-stage investor."

Von Grath leaned back, tugging at his beard. "I really should run this past my son, Jason. He'll be taking over for me in a few more years anyway, given I'm damn near old as Maxwell Manswell now."

Harper shrugged. "Whatever is most fair. At a 11% buy-in, we can almost certify a 32% return, or a profit of seventy-five million credits. Post-tax."

Von Grath coughed. "And of course you know the Family is struggling financially, you slick bastard. Very well. Send me the paperwork, and I'll get you your little meeting."

Harper stood, his black suit and gray shirt set off with a simple black strip and collarless hems. "A pleasure to be of service, Your Grace. If you don't mind, we'll just wait in the anteroom off the main wing, out of the way."

The ancient Duke stood. "I'll have Anita send over drinks. Wild Turkey?"

Harper bowed. "Of course. I'm not a _barbarian_."

**O-ATTWN-O**

"How in shit did I get dragged into this again, Skipper?"

Ashley Williams adjusted the fall of Shepard's full dress blue jumper top, fiddling with the collar and adjusting the silky honor sash so that it didn't clash with the twin ribbons of her Stars of Terra, while Karin Chakwas combed out tangles in Shepard's hair.

"Causality of being my friend, Ash."

Williams snorted, walking around Shepard and adjusting another wrinkle, before picking up Shepard's dress sword and buckling it on. "When Captain Anderson told me I was gonna be your bridesmaid, this is not what I had in mind."

Shepard's face broke into a grin, even as Chakwas turned her head slightly to adjust her hair. "It's not exactly traditional, sorry."

Williams huffed. "Yeah, I know that." She grimaced. "My folks were telling me a lot of the Terra First people are pissed as shit. And the tabloids had figured you were banging Jiong."

Chakwas chuckled as she finished. "Well, there is no accounting for taste, dear. Shepard, you have beautiful hair, but you take care of it about as well as you do your body. Speaking of which, I had a conversation with your Doctor Selanya about a few concerns."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "She's a goddamned prude."

Williams arched an eyebrow. "Do asari even have prudes? I figured since they go tramped up everywhere, dressing like something out of Girls Gone Wild: Alien Romp – " She broke off as Shepard cracked up laughing and Chakwas shook her head disapprovingly.

"And have you watched this particular documentary, Chief Williams?" Chakwas eyes glittered with amusement, and Williams stammered."

"No ma'am." A pause. "...I was _drunk_, okay?"

Shepard snickered again, and Williams huffed. "Sit still so I can check your ribbon block. Ugh."

In a nearby room, Liara was stock still as her father adjusted the fit of the T'Soni formal robes against her body, before helping her into the pale gray skysilk mantle. "I remember the last time Mother wore this...it was when I went off to the University for my first field expedition, and she looked so...dissapointed."

Aethyta's face tightened. "Yeah, well." She carefully adjusted the collar, checking the fit and making sure the mantle didn't obscure the belted warp sword at Liara's hip, before draping the shawl over her daughter's shoulders. "We all have regrets, Liara. Shit we never got around to doing, things we wish we had never said, and Goddess-damned memories we can't get rid of. Life is about getting past that and staying who you are."

Liara nodded. "But am I who I was any more, or some amalgam of myself and Sara? I am more aggressive than I was. Less willing to be pushed around." She gave a slight smile. "More interested in what you like to call 'bedroom fun'. Does that not mean I have changed?"

Aethyta shrugged. "Nah. It probably has to do with your heritage. My dad was a krogan, you know."

Liara gave her a strange look. "...and?"

Aethyta turned her around. "That makes you a quarter krogan."

Liara rolled her eyes. "It does not work that way, aithntar."

Aethyta snorted, adjusting the dress and how it draped slightly. "I'm over a thousand damned years old and you are hardly my only kid, you know. I've had kids with hanar. Don't tell me how asari reproduction works."

For her part, Liara was torn between confusion, bemusement, and horror. "Wait...I have a half sister who is part _hanar_?" Her voice must have revealed some of how she felt, because her father gave her an amused look.

"I thought that wasn't how it worked."

Liara said nothing, only staring at her father, who shrugged.

"I was in a bad place at the time. And ya know, your drives don't just stop dead when you become a matriarch. Sings-to-silences was ... a good person. For a jellyfish."

"_Aithntar_!"

"I'm just saying, Liara. He was there. And it was ...well, I certainly won't forget it. Not the point." She smiled and stepped back.

"All I'm saying is maybe the bond just woke up your natural krogan aggression, kiddo. Sirial was like her dad. She was drifty, and kind, and attracted to botany, just like he was, and always polite and thoughtful."

Liara smiled at the thought of having a half-sister who might not hate her. Aethyta continued on in a louder voice.

"But when you pissed her off, she was just like me. She headbutted a turian who was coming on too strong to her in a bar. It's the krogan in her. All I'm saying is that if you feel the urge to headbutt something, it's genetic."

Liara sighed and shook her head. "I have never wanted to headbutt anything." In her mind she tried to imagine it, but the very concept was ridiculous.

Aethyta, on the other hand, looked surprised. Given the frustrations her daughter had already endured...

"Really? Not even a little bit? Come on." The last was said in near exasperation.

Liara's eyes flashed. "I do not headbutt people!"

Aethyta held up her hands placatingly, her tone dry. "All right, fine. Don't go all blood rage on me." She smirked, and Liara scowled at her, only making burst out laughing.

"You look adorable when you're angry, Little Wing. C'mon, let's get you shacked up. The faster this is over, the faster you can go bang the shit out of Shepard. "

"AITHNTAR!"

**O-ATTWN-O**

When Shepard arrived at the vast estates of the von Graths, she had no idea what to expect. She exited the groundcar, glancing around at the expansive lush fields of grass surrounding the main, curved buildings and towering central hall. Trees all the way from Earth lined a narrow metalled path that meandered past a shallow, serene pond flanked by flowerbeds.

Anderson stood next to her. "I've always wonders how many millions of credits it must have cost to recreate a country estate...inside a space station." He gently took her arm in his, as Ashley Williams stepped out behind them both, dressed in a long white dress with pale blue trim, her hair loose and free.

"Wow. This place is almost as big as the old Williams estate." She glanced around, and then looked at Shepard. "You sure you want me here, Skipper? A lot of noble types aren't going to like me here. "

Shepard shrugged. "Told you before, Ash, fuck 'em." She exhaled. "Now what?"

Anderson gestured to the pair of black-attired men standing alongside the path. "We walk to the main hall, and through the processional. Just put one foot in front of the other and smile."

Shepard nodded, and they set off. The walk wasn't long – the entire estate probably only covered about two acres, given that it was on a deep space station – but every step felt heavy. The ribbons around her neck felt as if they weighed a ton, but she kept a faint smile on her face and tried to think happy thoughts.

They arrived at the main doors of the estate, age-blackened wood framed with modern durasteel, where a pair of House von Grath knights irregular in formal dress pulled the doors open. They stepped through, and then Shepard nearly stumbled.

The hall was long and towering, almost two stories to the ceiling, lined with wide windows and banners of the von Grath sigil. The sides of the hall were filled with people – mostly humans, but a large group of asari, and a tiny knot of other aliens near to where Wrex stood. At the far end of the hall was a massive man in the regalia of a Jesuit War-Priest, standing next to a beaming General von Grath.

Lining the path to the altar, however, were a line of men in full dress uniform, each one bearing the N7 flash. As she entered, Rear Admiral Branson drew his sword.

"N7 Special Operations. Draw! Swords!"

One hundred and thirty six men and women drew their dress swords, staring straight ahead at the N7 across from them. She saw Lee Riley. She saw Dunn, and Jackson. She saw Jason Delacor, and Robert Kivens, and Valerie Kyle. She saw Kahlee Sanders and even, to her unending shock, Admiral Ahern.

Anderson gave her a gentle nudge, and she walked forward in a daze, finding herself almost boneless and very close to tears. As she passed each pair of N7's they nodded. Delacor gave her a even-tempered tilt of his head, Kyle grinned at her, and Ahern was obviously fighting laughter.

Every single living N7 in the SA was here to celebrate one of their own.

Halfway down the processional, music started. At first, it was the human 'Here Comes the Bride' song, but after a few bars an alien, poly-tonal arrangement began in gentle counterpoint.

The part of her that was enmeshed with Liara recognized it instantly as a variation of the asari Atherion, their group of songs and chants that was the source of nearly all asari music. The two songs blended together surprisingly well, if adding a hint of dark melancholy to the normally upbeat wedding music.

As she reached the end of the N7s, Branson inclined his head to her and barked a second command. "Order arms! Dress front!" The N7s drew their sabers to a upright position, turning smartly to face the front.

As he did so, doors off to one side opened, and the Atherion swelled. Two huntresses of House T'Soni in yellow garb came through the doors, the dresses a touch short and tight but hardly scandalous, followed by Liara and Aethyta. The latter wore long formal robes of some kind, dark brown with white panels and a very elaborate sash like Shepard wore, but surmounted by no less than three black seashells of the Black Remembrance.

Liara herself wore her mother's formal regalia, the long pale-yellow dress with a inset of gray, with a thin silken gray mantel over it, imprinted heavily with the T'Soni sigil. Her head was obscured by a narrow headdress covering her crests, and a delicate line of white facial paint trailed down each cheek. Following them both was the younger cousin, Riala, bearing a short silvery box in her hands.

The two parties met in front of the altar, a heavy stone construction trimmed in steel. The Jesuit War Priest looked over them both. A massive bear of a man, his outfit was traditionalist in the extreme – thick dark crimson cassock, the white tab of his clerical collar nearly obscured by the shoulder armor and wide baldric he wore. Purity seals – red smears of wax pinning long scrolls of biblical scripture and liturgy – festooned his belt, vambraces and heavy metallic boots.

His features were equally ferocious – a heavy jaw and brows dominated the lines of his face, deep brown eyes placid but also watchful. He nodded at them both as they came to a stop, Anderson stepping to the left, Aethyta to the right.

Williams took up position behind Shepard, as Riala did behind Liara, and the War-Priest nodded.

"Valiant soldiers of God, honored guests, and gracious cousins. We are gathered here today to celebrate and formalize the union between two beloved souls."

The priest stared around the group of humans and aliens. "In our galaxy, where darkness spreads so fast one can scarce see the light, we are constantly bombarded with evils, with tribulation, with sorrow and above all else with hatreds. We are told that our differences are what matters. That our hatreds are justified, that when the Lord – or Athame, Keeper of Secrets, or the turian ancestors, or the salarian Wheel – speak of peace and love, that it applies to Us, not the Other."

The war-priest smiled. "Yet we are here today – human and turian, asari and krogan, quarian and salarian – to celebrate the joining of two people in love who are not the same. Sara Shepard has suffered privation all her life, and Liara T'Soni isolation from her own kind, and yet they both have fought in the name of the Light – against hatred, and against evil, and against the soul-darkening filth that Saren Arterius would have inflicted on us all."

He placed both hands on his altar, voice thunderous. "Those who have preached hatred, those who have lied and corrupted, those who have made vile war and inflicted death, tears and suffering upon us all – these two have smote them as surely as the hand of God would have. And in this truth we should see the future."

He exhaled. "I am not here to preach, but to bring together, but think upon my words, fellow beings, and any watching this remotely. Still your words of racism, your sneers of disapproval. Love, as our lord Christ proclaimed – as Athame proclaimed, as the ancestors of the turians – as every heart and soul standing alive today knows – is what we fight for, what we bleed for, and ultimately, what we die for."

He turned his gaze to the two before him. "You come this day to bind together what cannot be sundered. Baroness Sara Shepard, do you swear upon your immortal soul to take this person to be your lawfully wedded partner, to cherish, to hold, to defend, in sickness, in health, despite despair?"

She nodded. "To death, and beyond, I do."

He turned to Liara. "And do you, Lady Liara T'Soni, swear upon your immortal soul to take this person to be your lawfully wedded partner, to cherish, to hold, to defend, in sickness, in health, despite despair?"

Liara's voice trembled as she nodded. "I do. Until death and beyond."

Aethyta stepped forward, with a handful of cords. Riala opened the box she carried, revealing a pair of delicately forged gold bracelets, while Ashley took Liara's left hand and Shepard's right, laying them together, palms facing.

General von Grath had a gleeful smile on his face as he carefully tied the cords he was handed, lines of black and yellow, red and gray binding them together at finger, thumb, wrist and hand, until he stepped back.

Anderson took Shepard's free hand, and Aethyta Liara's and they tugged three times, before letting go. At that, the War-Priest smiled again. "Then by the authority and power vested in me – by the Commission of Moral Integrity, by the stewardship of Mother Church and the holy spirit of Father God – let none sunder what is placed together this day, and let any who speak against it now or forever be struck with the anger of the Lord!"

He inclined his head, lifting his hands in benediction. "While not traditional in asari bondings...I would be remiss to suggest otherwise – you may kiss the bride."

Shepard did so, and cheering sounded faint in her ears against the cool touch of Liara's lips.

**O-ATTWN-O**

As it turned out, eating with one hand bound was such a pain in the ass that Ashley and Riala were basically there to assist with that. The von Grath's had laid on a stupendously diverse meal selection after the wedding itself, and Shepard sat at the head of the high table, along with General von Grath and his father, the Duke.

That hoary old man was even more incorrigible than his son, openly flirting with Shepard AND Liara, much to their amusement. A long line of people came by to speak to them, but Shepard wasn't that hungry anyway, her stomach still doing flip-flops.

One of the first was Kyle's oldest daughter, Valerie. The commander of the second N7 brigade, she was a bit younger than Shepard, biotic like her brothers had been. While not a vanguard like Shepard, her virulent hatred of slavers and her violent approach to battle had ended up with people calling her the Little Butcher – an appellation she seemed proud of.

"It's good to see you again, Shepard. Thank you for sending word to me about Dad." The woman was tall like her father had been, with the same expressive eyes and almost godlike perfect features.

Shepard shrugged – the action slightly tilting Liara, who nudged her. "Yeah, well. That was the least I could do, Countess."

Kyle rolled her eyes. "Don't call me Countess and I won't call you Baroness. Seriously, thank you for inviting me. I always hoped you would get back on your feet – Dad said you would – but I didn't think you'd end up ...well, this successful."

Shepard picked at her salad with her free hand. "It's not everything it's cracked up to be, trust me. But things could be worse." She paused. "When did the order go out for all the N7s to show up?"

Kyle smiled. "Quite a while, actually. Opinions have always been divided on you. But when Admiral Ahern gets on the horn..."

Shepard laughed. "He was probably planning this the entire time. Asshole pretends he's all hard, but he is a good guy if you can get past the cursing."

Liara giggled. "But there is so much cursing to get past, Sara."

Kyle grinned herself. "Don't want to hog all the time, but I sent you my TTL. I'm actually stationed here, so please, give me a call. I have some...some things I want to ask. About Dad."

Shepard nodded solemnly. "I will, I promise."

Several other guests – Udina, smoothly polite; Senator Adkins, congratulatory; Admiral Mikhaleovich, eye-rolling but also genial – passed before the person who'd most surprised her by being here showed up.

Captain Delacor, she noted, had even more Purple Hearts than she did. He gave a cool smile as he walked up, and nodded at Liara. "Congratulations, Shepard. It's good to see you've turned things around."

She smiled back as neutrally as she could. "Thank you, sir. And...thank you for coming. I know you didn't have to."

Delacor shrugged. "Things haven't ever been good between us. I think that a lot of things regarding you should have been handled differently by the SA, and I'm not convinced that what I did in reaction was wrong, either. But the way you've handled yourself since you left the Fifth – not to mention stopping that goddamned Saren bastard – is enough to show that I was wrong to think you wouldn't change."

He glanced down. "In some ways, my being here is me saying I am glad I was wrong."

She nodded. "For what it's worth, sir … looking back on a lot of the stunts I pulled in the past makes me wonder if I was totally sane before Liara came along and woke me up." She grimaced. "I still think we're too soft on slavers, and I won't back down from that. But I was letting my anger and pain make the calls instead of my brain, and that not only cost a lot of good marines their lives but made my own situation worse."

He nodded. "You still haven't figured out how to take prisoners, though."

She laughed. "Incorrect! There's still that one guy I didn't kill back on Almor."

Delacor rolled his eyes before turning to Liara. "From what I hear, most of her changes can be attributed to you, Lady Liara. For that alone, you have my thanks, and my sympathy."

Liara nodded uncertainly. "Your sympathy?" She thought he meant about her mother, but he merely smirked as he walked off.

"No, for being stuck with that _lunatic_. Later, Shepard."

Shepard stuck her tongue out at him as he walked off, and Liara laughed.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Later still, she sat in a wide open foyer chatting with people as they came by, Liara by her side on the couch.

Blue Suns Captain and Warden Kuril of Meshar was dressed in what passed for turian undress – a set of black robe-like clothing and a heavy breastplate, with high polished steel boots. He sat drinking a glass of something turian and green, talking about his operations.

"I figure we've clawed down at least nine or ten pirate networks – it's gotten to the point where Aria and P are sending goons to my station trying to threaten me to back off, and the batarians put another ten million credits on my head. Slaving bastards."

Shepard nodded sourly. "I'm glad to hear you're still in business. Gladder to know that you haven't given up your little crusade."

Kuril sighed. "It hasn't been easy, Major. I've had to rescue far too many children – turian, asari, human – and look into blasted little faces, and tell them their loved ones are gone. Had to space too many ruined bodies because pirates decided to kill their captives rather than give them over." He gave her a hard stare. "And as ugly as this sounds, given what else they were up to...it's gotten worse since you took down Cerberus. They were evil bastards, but they didn't like pirates much either."

Shepard nodded sourly. "Problem is, they were taking the slaves they got from raiding the pirates and doing even worse to them, the sick fucks."

Kuril drained his glass. "Indeed. Ancestors preserve me from ever understanding why anyone would do that sort of thing." He glanced at Liara. "Still...it's rare I get a happy reason to leave my station, and this is indeed a happy thing. If you need anything from the Blue Suns, you know where to find me."

Shepard nodded. "Yeah. Do me a favor. There should be one other turian here, Garrus Vakarian."

Kuril flicked a mandible. "Yes, I'm … familiar with the Vakarian family. What of it?"

Shepard exhaled. "Not too long ago he ran down a bastard of a salarian doctor known as Saleon. The guy was tied in some things I can't go into, but one of them was loosely tied into batarian slaving rings. They found some weird genetic slave brands but I don't recognize the symbol – do you?"

She pulled up the image on her omni using voice commands, and Kuril jerked when he saw it, fringe visibly lifting.

"Spirits of spite. Shepard, that brand is only used by the Imperial Guard! It's the brand of slaves destined to serve in the Imperial Palace. I don't recognize the other marks – they don't look batarian at all."

Shepard grimaced. "They aren't. They're like marks we found on...well, on a geth shrine."

Kuril blinked, before tapping his talon on his temple thoughtfully. "That makes very little sense. I'll find this Vakarian and see what else he knows, and if I find anything out when I head back I'll let you know. But Shepard...if this is actually Imperial Guild slavers tied up in this mess, you need to be careful. The Guard is not the rabble of the State Arms militia or even the Fist. The last time my men crossed them, nine of them slaughtered almost thirty of my best mercs."

Shepard nodded. "I'm always careful."

After talking with a few other people and having Ashley describe to a slightly drunken Tali where to find some place to lay down, Shepard got into a conversation with yet another unexpected guest.

She was just finishing talking with Ash when Duke von Grath came up to them both. "Ah, Shepard. Good to see you are having fun. My boy was always full of stories about you, glad to see he didn't exaggerated on your beauty."

She smirked. "Duke von Grath, I'm sadly a married woman now."

He chortled. "Yes, well. The way my boy keeps making eyes at that doctor woman – Chakwas – might not be long afore you get called back to participate in another wedding.

Shepard glared across the room at von Grath, who lifted his glass with a smirk before turning back to chat with Karin. "She was my doctor, Your Grace, before he literally stole her."

The duke merely cackled. "Ah, trained him well I did. There's a reason I have nineteen children, and it isn't because I'm hardcore Catholic." He sobered a moment later. "If you have a few minutes of time, there is someone who wishes to speak to you and Lady Liara. Privately."

Shepard arched an eyebrow."And who is it?"

The old man glanced away, his pure white beard shifting as he tugged on it almost nervously. "I'd... rather not say in the open. He is someone who claims to have provided you assistance in the past, and would prefer to keep his actions … quiet."

Shepard frowned. Tetrimus? The Broker himself? She shrugged, and glanced at Liara, who merely shrugged back. "Sure, whatever. Just make sure my pilot or idiot old team mate don't embarrass me too much while I'm busy."

Von Grath grinned. "Mr. Dunn is apparently quite a hit with two of my granddaughters."

Shepard paused, then shuddered. "Trust me, don't let that happen, Your Grace. The last thing we need in this universe is any more of him."

A few minutes later they were ushered into a small anteroom, with a couch and a heavy leather chair. The walls were dominated by wide bay windows looking out over Arcturus proper, and the chair – a rotating kind – was facing away.

Shepard frowned at the smell of high-priced cigarette smoke in the room, noting a decanter of whiskey and a pack of ninety-credit a pack Compineros cigarettes on the table in front of the couch. A smooth, well modulated voice that tickled at her memory spoke. "Have a seat, Major Shepard, Doctor T'Soni. Have a cigarette, if you like."

They sat, Liara using a touch of biotics to make sure they didn't fall, as the chair rotated around. The man sitting there was tanned and slender, wearing a dark suit with a slightly lighter shirt. His hair was black and his features plain, but Shepard stiffened immediately when he took off the dark sunglasses he wore, immediately recognizing the glowing blue eyes that pierced her.

"You."

Jack Harper smiled genially, tipping his ashes into a tray on the arm of the chair. "Yes, _me_, Major. Jack Harper, in the flesh."

She glanced at Liara. "You must be a goddamned idiot to come here. There's at least six Commissars outside, not to mention the entire N7 force of the SA. You're a wanted criminal that everyone thinks is dead."

Harper shrugged. "True enough, Shepard. And yet, before you call out for someone to come arrest – or kill – me, I think you should take a moment to hear what I have to say."

Liara gazed at him coldly, feeling Shepard's anger bleed into her. "Why should we listen to anything a proven terrorist and murderer has to say? Do you think turning on your own vile group makes you somehow redeemed in our eyes?"

The Illusive Man sighed gently, puffing on his cigarette. "No, nor do I seek redemption from anyone. The actions I took were to correct a problem in my organization not of my doing."

Shepard snarled. "Bullshit! You started Cerberus – "

Harper broke in. "Do you honestly think, Major, that Rachel Florez or Richard Williams were part of Cerberus without the SA's knowledge? Do you really think I would risk my own life to come here and try to talk to you if it wasn't of vital importance? I am the one who is feeding your President data on the forces arrayed against him – forces than will kill you, and your new wife – if they can."

She stared at him, and he continued. "I assure you that if at the end of this conversation, you decide to kill me or turn me in, I will not resist. But what I have to say is critical – both to my own future, and yours. And it touches on Dr. T'Soni as well."

Shepard grimaced, and glanced at Liara. "Marazul?"

The asari sighed, and picked up the package of cigarettes. "To paraphrase my aithntar, we can always kill him afterwards."

She lit the cigarette, a wreath of smoke sifting across her blue features. "Speak, then, Mr. Harper. But I am perfectly willing to shove a singularity into your smirking mouth if you play us false."

The Illusive Man smiled back. "Your winning personality is rubbing off on Dr. T'Soni, Shepard. No matter." He lifted a glass of scotch from the table, sipping calmly. "I do not gamble, I merely play the odds. That is why I am here."

He glanced from face to face before speaking. "There is a group of people currently in power in the SA that, I suspect, are bound and determined to place the SA on a course from which only destruction can result. They have plotted to attempt something that I simply cannot go along with – and if I am correct, the only thing standing in their way is President Windsor."

He gestured at Shepard. "Over a year ago, one of my operatives stumbled across something in a data trawl – a Cerberus operation to conduct genetic experimentation on human biotics. Except that I did not authorize any such operations, and to the best of my knowledge Rachel and Richard did not either. I swiftly discovered that a great deal of the disquieting things Cerberus was conducting was actually carefully hidden off the books, out of my oversight and ability to monitor."

Liara wanted to sneer. "How convenient. So you are not responsible for the butchery we saw at your HQ?"

Harper shook his head. "Au contrare, Doctor. I had grown complacent and far too smug in my own abilities, and they outwitted me. The disgrace you saw there was indeed my responsibility, because I did not prevent the SA from turning Cerberus into some nightmarish version of the turian Deathwatch. When I started Cerberus, it was to counter intelligence, economic and military info-war sabotage of humanity, to ensure that we didn't fall victim to the financial slavery of the turians, the biological genocide of the krogan, or the exile of the quarians."

He sighed. "It was later I was caught by the AIS and literally forced at gunpoint to bring Williams and Florez into Cerberus – and it is they who pursued the gruesome research you speak of. You may find stories of Cerberus assassinating people or the like, but I had no reason to commit atrocity on that scale."

He inhaled from his cigarette again. "After discovering the hidden operations and may other violations of what I had been told was going on, my people found quite a bit of other information. I was able, with some difficulty, to find a conduit to attempt to get this information out to someone with the influence to try and stop it. Sadly, most of the people I reached out to reacted much as you did, but one man was brave enough and open minded enough to listen, and took what I had and did his own research."

Shepard grimaced, things becoming clear. "You were Major Kyle's source."

Harper nodded. "Yes, Shepard, I was. I gave him what I knew and had found out, and let him dig for more. I did not expect the results to … destroy his mind so completely, or shatter his faith so utterly. And when he fell back to Presrop, I assumed the game was over. Kyle would be taken captive, and I would be exposed."

Shepard bit her lip. "So you decided to sell the rest of Cerberus out and bail."

He shrugged. "As it stood, the Council's decision to use Spectre forces to coordinate the assault caught me off guard – it was sheer dumb luck I made the move I did at that time. An hour later and Jondam Bau would have been putting a bullet in my head."

He spread his hands. "Instead, I was able to bring down my compatriots and expose some of what they were doing, derailing a great many plans in the process. When Kyle died rather than be captured, and later on I heard murmurs that the information I gave you was paired with insights only Kyle had dug up, I decided to take another gamble."

He finished his cigarette. "When forces began arraying against President Windsor in the aftermath of the Noveria situation, I had my people do what they could. I won't belabor the details, but the long and short of it is that without my interference, Lord Aldrien's little stunt to stop you from chasing Lady Benezia would have been backstopped by Commissars and a writ from the Council of Lords."

Shepard sighed. "Goddamn it."

Liara shifted her arm, puffing on her own cigarette a final time before scrubbing it out. "Even if what you say is true, it does not explain why you are here."

Harper nodded. "Very well. The best way to put this is bluntly: there are elements of the Coleman administration who want distance from the Citadel. They want this not only to prevent greater scrutiny from the STG and the Spectres that would unveil their plans, but also to turn the bulk of the human population away from the Council and indeed from the general thrust of the direction the SA has been headed towards."

He lit a fresh cigarette. "They feel, perhaps reasonably, that the Council is simply not trustworthy, and that given the Reaper threat – yes , I know about that – that humanity is likely to be a sacrifice in any coming war."

Harper's glowing eyes bored into hers. "And to solve the problem, they have reached out to both P and the Shadow Broker, to have you and the President removed from play, Shepard. They have even made common cause with certain disgruntled asari Justicars and houses to eliminate Dr. T'Soni at the same time. While I'm not sure what the Broker will do yet, P's people have already accepted the offer...and will be on Arcturus shortly."

He leaned back, smiling faintly. "Still want to throw me to the N7's, Major?"


	21. Chapter 21 : Uninvited Guests

**_A/N: _**_Many thanks to a couple of readers who offered their opinions and advice on this chapter. It's a long one (Just over 12k words) so you might want to find a comfy chair if you're reading this on your mobile. _

_There are a lot of moving pieces in this chapter - I'm sort of compressing the pre-BDTS events as much as possible in terms of number of chapters, but that leads to longer ones. This chapter answers a lot of 'motivational' questions as well as introduce some other characters. _

_As usual, I like repurposing minor canon characters when I can - bonus points if you can identify Captain Toni or Chief Dah from the canon without using the ME Wiki. _

* * *

_' I think the scariest moment in my life was when Liara figured out I was the one who breached security at Arcturus. Oh, and since Shep didn't know, here's hoping she doesn't read this. If she does...um, taicho, it was an oopsie?' _

_\- Kasumi Goto, 'Nihilistic, Voyeuristic, and Fantastic : a History of the Secret Wars (co-written by Jacob Taylor)_

* * *

The tramp freighter Vindicus Area was little more than an old, worn out cargo barge, converted from a FCW troop carrier and patched with bits of technology from an assortment of races and places. Its cargo of plascrete beam supports, power conduits, and sacks of flash-fill cement were easily scanned and raised no eyebrows, and the crew were all human with papers perfectly in order.

The customs officials did their usual checks, of course, but they were hardly expecting trouble. The fact this was Arcturus – very nearly the heart of Alliance space – had something to do with such confidence, but it had more to with the fact that the docks were overloaded with travel. Media ships were flitting in all directions in a frenzy to get hard information on Shepard's mysterious wedding gala, and one more tramp freighter simply wasn't that important to the overworked customs officials.

After all, the exits from the docks were secured with top of the line scanners, the Commissars prowled everywhere, and getting into the Sphere itself was nearly impossible without proper clearance. If a little illicit cargo got shifted about on the docks, no one really paid much attention to that.

The heavily shielded and isolated compartment in the belly of the ship wasn't even known to the crew of the freighter, and was missed the customs team. When the ship docked in the tertiary cargo area of Arcturus, there were few people out and about to see three black-armored figures exit the ship. Using magboots and traction gloves, they carefully snuck under the mooring and fueling hose junction arm, crawling along until they were able to enter the maintenance hatch at the end of the arm.

The three stopped in the tiny maintenance access room, double checking their gear. Two of them were females – one slender, in lighter armor and with a hood-like armored cowl over her helmet. The other woman was taller and much bulkier, the black-painted surface of her armor nicked and pitted. The man towered over even the big woman, pausing to tap at the throat-mike he wore.

"Phase one completed. Status check." His voice was distorted by the voder in his battle mask, coming out raspy and flat.

Over the comm-link in their helmets, a voice sounded, cool and dispassionate. "We're inside as well. Moving on your order. Clear."

He nodded to himself, glancing at the two females. The slender one went to work immediately, pulling up her omni-tool and kicking off several programs at once, tiny lines of cryptic code scrolling past faster than the eye could follow on the floating haptic display. The red light set above the heavy-set armored hatchway in the room flickered and turned a solid green, and then slid open with a hiss of released air.

Making their way into the narrow tunnel, they literally walked right past the customs officials overhead. After almost a hundred feet of walking as quietly as possible, they came to a thickly armored intersection of tunnels, framed with braced with heavy support beams. Bright white stencils on the walls warned of decompression hazards.

The man pulled out a thin roll of plastic, unfurling it to reveal a glowing haptic map of various tunnels and passageways of Arcturus. He examined it minutely before tapping a segment of tunnel. "This _is_ where we cut, right?"

The smaller woman peered over the h-sheet and then nodded. "Hai, that's the place. But the whole tunnel is sealed – an atmospheric breach will set off alarms."

He grunted. "Got that one covered, actually. Set these up to either side of the junction here – airtight kinetic screens. Designed to keep out riot and suppression gas, but it will hold back an atmosphere as well."

The two women nodded, each taking one of the devices, as the big man turned to the left wall, typing rapidly into his omni-tool After a moment, the dull whump of kinetic barriers kicking off echoed through the tunnel, and he paused to make sure they were set before performing a final adjustment to his omni.

The glowing tip of a projected omni-field turned into a cutting torch, and he began slicing into the thick walls of the tunnel. Sparks jumped out as some of the metal crumbled, and he hissed before adjusting the flow. "Make _sure_ there's no atmo leakage, not sure how good those shields are."

The slender woman checked a reading on her own omni-tool before nodding. "Hai, clear." She tilted her head. "Do you know the target yet? The Broker didn't give me many details."

The man on the cutting tool shook his head. "No. Don't give as shit, neither. For six million credits it could be fucking _anybody_, but given our destination – probably someone at that wedding. We'll get a brief once we get in the Sphere."

The other, larger woman sighed. "_If_ we get in the Sphere." She swore softly. "Just great. There's two _entire fucking divisions_ of N7's there on top of God knows who else. This had better involve explosives or something besides going in straight."

With a grunt, the man finished his work on the tunnel, having scored a large circular hole in the thick walls. He braced himself and kicked the section of wall, sending it tumbling out into the inky blackness beyond.

He turned to the two women."Keep it tight – if we alarm now, we're beyond fucked. Dah, take point, and keep an eye out for motion sensors. I'll take the middle. Goto, you're in the rear."

The woman named Dah put her hands on her hips."I'm point, Toni?"

Toni shrugged, gesturing to his weapon, a sniper rifle. "Hard to snap target with a giant sniper rifle. Get moving."

The three clambered out of the narrow service tunnel onto the surface of Arcturus, hidden by the overhang of the dock under-works. Crawling along the curving surface, they paused every time passing fighters or shuttles sped beneath them, hidden in darkness.

It took fifteen long, silent minutes to reach another access hatch, this one rusted and pitted with age and disuse. Toni looked it over carefully, before folding his arms. "You sure this hatch is not connected to any alarm systems?"

Goto laughed. "_Please_. I'm a professional, and it's not the first time I've had to play peek-a-boo with Arcturus Security. Child's play." She slipped ahead, pulling a slender gray cord from her omni-tool and tried to connect it to an ancient access panel next to the hatch.

The cord plugged in, but her omni-tool bleeped angrily. "Corrosion on the leads. Gimme a second." She reached down to her belt, pulling up a small bottle and spraying something silvery and faintly glowing on the port. "Omnidust suspension."

Dah chuckled. "Slick."

When Goto tried to plug her cord in the second time, it slid in smoothly, and the omni-tool on her wrist beeped and displayed a haptic numeric pad. Tapping in a five digit code, she waited several seconds as a program on her omni-tool went to work. After a few seconds, a new series of numbers popped up.

She typed those in, and the hatch shuddered before grinding open slowly, a waft of frozen vapor rushing out. Goto gestured. "Ta-da!"

Toni shook his head at her, and the three climbed in, the hatch sealing behind them.

Dah struck a chem-light, holding it up. The walls were old metal, with a thick red line painted about waist high. In the dim light they could barely make out words – 'Solar Systems Alliance Station Arcturus'.

Scattered here and there along the floor were piles of trash, yellowing paper and other hardly recognizable detritus, along with a rusted toolkit. Dah swung the chem-light around, revealing the tunnel ran both directions. Her voice was a whisper as she spoke. "The fuck is this place? Briefing said we'd go through tunnels, but this is ... ancient."

Goto shrugged. "Old Arcturus under-works Most people have forgotten it even exists, but this was the foundation of the older base sections before the place got wrecked in the FCW. When the Alliance rebuilt, they used this as a foundation, but it runs straight past all the high-priced scan-systems and direct into the Sphere."

Toni nodded. "Alright. You've done your part. Go ahead and let the Broker know we appreciate his assistance in this. You have your own way out?"

Goto nodded. "Yeah. Listen up, this is important. This tunnel heads straight into the Sphere, comes out near the medical district in a sewage dump. The von Grath manor is about five hundred yards south of there, with 'north' being the Alliance Command Tower. If you come back this way, this tunnel also runs into a secondary berthing area for in-system shuttles.

She paused. "According to P,. there's two shuttles there now – the one I'm getting on, and one for you. The shuttle is stealthed and will take you to the pickup ship in orbit around the third gas giant. After that, I never saw you, right?"

Toni nodded. "Got it. Good work."

With that, Goto turned away, walking down the hallway almost silently. The man traded glances with Dah, and when he looked back in the direction Goto had left in, she was gone.

"...the _fuck?_ She was just there!"

Dah merely shrugged. "Who cares? Come on, let's get moving."

The two remaining figures walked steadily along the tunnel for a good six or seven hundred feet before it sloped upwards, finally terminating in a large sewage flash pool. A heavy secure airlock hatch let the waste vent out to the system – their tunnel ended in a vent overlooking the pool itself.

"Always goddamned sewers." Dah sighed and pulled a spool of rope from the small backpack she wore, while the big man nodded sourly.

'"Quicker we're done, quicker we get a shower. Hit the omni and see if we have our target yet."

Securing the rope first, the woman did so, waiting for the onboard package to decrypt. Shapes crept across the surface of the omni-tool as it made a connection. A moment later the faint haptic image of a turian in black and pink face-paint spoke, his voice a solemn whisper.

"The P's Truth has been commissioned to deal with an irritant. Normally I don't take jobs against your people – but this one is simply too _delicious_ to pass up. As you no doubt have heard, Major Shepard, the killer of Saren, is getting married."

"There are three primary targets. First is Human Councilor Donnel Udina. Second is Shepard's new wife, Doctor Liara T'Soni. If you have a shot of opportunity at Shepard herself, take it – the bonus is double what you'll get for the other two."

"I told you to pack a spare omni for a reason, Dah – in four seconds this one is going to fry. If you get caught, well, at least your deaths will be quick. Don't get caught."

With a curse, she unslotted the omni and hurled it away into the filthy water below, a second before it flared into a spurt of plasma. "P's a goddamned lunatic. Crashing a wedding...the fuck is this, Pulp Fiction?"

Toni grimaced, the expression unseen behind his helmet. "This isn't good. Even if we engage successfully, the whole system will go on lockdown. The fact that he sent two teams... he expects one to fail."

Dah snorted. "Or one team to chicken out and quit."

Toni merely shook his head. "I don't know about you, but I can't back out on this. The Commissariat is looking for me – the only chance I've got for survival is to get records hacked and some facial surgery done."

Dah nodded. "Yeah. Pretty much the same for me. If I don't pay off the shit I owe Aria, her people will find me and make me into a goddamned bloody stain." She exhaled deeply. "Let's do it."

Toni only lifted his weapon from his back in response, a heavily customized THUNDERBOLT sniper rifle. "Yeah. It's going to be messy getting out of here, but if we can come back this way, we might actually have a shot."

They slipped out of the tunnel, sliding down the rope to the muck below, and Toni took the lead. Covering the area with his sniper, he gestured forward. "Clear."

Dah unholstered a hot-shotted volus laser burster – a rapid firing shotgun that discharged x-ray lasers, invisible to the naked eye – and followed him cautiously, splashing through shallow, filthy water. It only took a few minutes for them to reach the end of the sewer tunnel itself, pushing open a door.

The sewer entrance sat in the middle of a low concrete culvert, where several other pipes emptied out at. A narrow metal ladder running up the side of the culvert lead to an elevated catwalk, overlooking the estates of the von Graths. Directly to their right, the bulk of Manswell Memorial Hospital blocked the view of the rest of the Sphere's interior.

Dah gestured to the open catwalk, and the two of them ducked down, running towards it. Toni checked his omni and pointed to the right. "Once we get up on the catwalk, rappel down the other side of the and we'll be in sight of the estate. The walls are alarmed, but there's enough cover from the stupid trees they planted that we can simply snipe from there."

Dah shook her head, pulling out her own h-sheet, with a map of the immediate area on it. "Maybe, but that leads them right this way." The pointed to the map. "If we just slip around the back of the hospital, that we can slip towards those buildings across the way. Warehouses of some kind. From there, you'd have an elevated shot, and they'd end up heading away from our exit point."

Toni thought about it, then nodded. "Not a bad idea." He glanced around. "I figure sooner or later the party will break up. Our best shot is to hit them as they exit, then fall back here. We'll seal suits and just stand around outside that sewage chute we saw till shit cools, then head for the shuttle. Straight?"

Dah nodded. "Piece of cake." She stood up, reaching for the ladder to the catwalk and began clambering up

She reached the top, and glanced around. A second later, a faintly glowing blade exploded through her chest, spraying chips of black armor and a spray of hot blood all over Toni's faceplate. She fell backwards bonelessly, her body falling into two cleanly bisected pieces to slam hard on the ground with a splatter of vividly red blood.

Something black flickered in his obscured vision. He tried to wipe his visor clear of the gore with his free hand, but it only smeared the vision port. Before he could pull his helmet off, a line of fire tore through his shoulder.

He staggered back, and then the pain hit him as he realized his right arm – the one holding his rifle – had been sliced clean off. Before he could do more than that, someone kicked his knee hard enough to shatter the kneecap, crumpling his armor and bending the limb back at a horribly incorrect angle.

He fell to the ground, landing on top of his own severed arm. He tried to reach for his rifle, and saw it kicked away. The last thing he saw, through smears of red, was a black cybernetic mask and two glowing white eyes, and a razor-sharp blade diving for his throat.

With a sigh, Kai Leng wiped his mono-molecular blade off, sheathing it a moment later. He tapped his omni, voice a dull whisper. "Leng here. Two-man team down at the sewer entrance. No sign of a third. Over."

A faintly exasperated, rough voice answered back. "This is Pel. Just bagged me two more at the power-station. Fuckers must think no one is old enough to remember the goddamned under-works...kids these days. They're down."

A third voice spoke on the commlink. "Lawson here. Only one showed up at customs, and our tip got that one arrested. We still do not know how the others got access to the Underworks in the first place – there are no atmospheric breach alarms in any of the connecting service corridors. There may be more of them. Remain alert."

Leng just sighed again, this time at Miranda's curt tones, before glancing at the two dead thugs. He thought about dragging the bodies out of sight, but his orders for this job were explicit – kill them and get clear.

_Besides, they are already in the sewer, where sewage belonged._

He settled for kicking both of the bodies into the muck of the culvert, before checking himself one final time for any bloodstains. With that he triggered his cloaking field and began climbing up the ladder to the catwalk.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Some distance away, Kasumi Goto examined the black-painted shuttle she was supposed to ride to safety carefully. She checked the controls, finding them codelocked – remotely controlled – and almost laughed. "I was born at night, but not _last_ night, P. I don't think so."

Stripping out of the black-armored suit she had on, she tossed everything into the shuttle, leaving her wearing a set of nondescript civilian clothing. She paused to recover her hood, draping it over her shoulders and pulling it down around her face, before stepping off. She shut the shuttle door and sent it on its way, and was in the process of making her way back up to the docks when the tracer she left on the armor stopped transmitting.

It took her another four minutes to get up to the docks, and she found a few people still staring outside, where a shuttle had mysteriously exploded for no reason at all. She shrugged.

"Don't take candy from strangers and never get into strange shuttles with codelocked destinations." She whistled a merry tune as she handed the customs man another forged passport, breezing through towards the public transport concourses, where she quietly engaged a third-class seat to the Citadel.

**O-ATTWN-O**

In the study of the von Grath mansion, Shepard and Liara both stared at the Illusive Man for a long second before Shepard finally spoke. "There are assassins going to crash my wedding?"

The entire long string of ridiculous things she'd been subjected to for the past few weeks just caught up with her all at once, and Liara gave a small start of surprise when Shepard burst out laughing.

The Illusive Man arched an eyebrow, leaning back a bit more and sipping his drink. "Not the usual reaction people have to learning such news."

She shrugged. "There's a long list of people who want me dead. All I know about P. is that he's some turian fuck who hates the Citadel races – another terrorist. Like you. Why would you act to stop him?"

Harper gave a sigh. "Given your relative importance, I do wish the Alliance would have expended more resources on improving your elocution and awareness of events beyond the battlefield. Then again..."

The glowing blue eyes narrowed, and he puffed on the cigarette again. "Such a lack is to be expected from those with poor foresight. To answer your question, P. is the only known name of a turian anarchist. A criminal, slaver, and indeed a terrorist – he acts in a nearly random fashion, often turning against his own people when they have nothing more to offer. He hates the turians, the salarians, and the asari – perhaps now that the humans and quarians have joined the Council he has decided to turn on us."

Liara glanced uncertainly at Shepard. "I have only heard a few stories of P. But they are much as you described him." Shepard glowed with pride as the asari's voice hardened. "That does not tell us why you would warn us of his attacks – or how you came to know about them."

Harper inclined his head. "A pertinent question, Doctor T'Soni. Suffice it to say that my organization has a very long arm and good ears. The issue of why I'm doing this will be explained in good time. The larger issue – that you have people who want you both dead – and the reach to get it done is what should be concerning you."

Shepard snorted. "More than the assassins on the way?"

Sipping his drink, Harper merely gave the thinnest hint of a smile. "Well, they were. I suspect a few minutes ago all such parties met a rather abrupt, messy end – courtesy of Cerberus. I'm here, above all else, to make sure that you, Doctor T'Soni, and their third target, Councilor Udina, stay alive."

Shepard almost went to fold her arms before remembering Liara. She settled for rubbing her face. "Udina? They wanted to kill Udina?" Her eyes narrowed. "Who exactly was behind this?"

Harper spread his hands. "I'm afraid my people haven't figured that out yet. I had a very narrow of opportunity to get assets aboard Arcturus without detection before any hostile parties got here – a task, I assure you, that was not simple nor done on a whim. Everything I have worked for, my own life, and those of many of my top operatives could be lost if this ends poorly."

He took a hit from the cigarette in his hands. "However, some things are worth any risk. Humanity's future – and your importance to it – is one of them."

Shepard tilted her head. "I have your say-so on this – not that I'm buying a word of it – but if you aren't lying … why the fuck do you care? I'd think your pack of retreaded KKK members would be happy if me and Liara bought it."

Harper shook his head. "Not at all. To me, you are a valuable asset – destroying you would only be to the detriment of the Alliance, of humanity. Right now, you are an incredibly powerful symbol of what our species can achieve." He puffed at his cigarette. "Those who wish you silenced are those who fear that power."

Liara shook her own head. "You talk about people as if they were pieces in a game of rithai, but neither Sara or I are your 'assets'."

Shepard smirked, but the Illusive Man merely waved his hand. "Doctor T'Soni, I fear you will find that in life we are all but pieces on the chessboard. Until now, you have been moved by those who were willing to sacrifice you as pawns. I merely offer the chance to determine your own next moves, as it were."

Shepard shook her head. "I don't think so. Again, you being here, talking to me, makes no sense. You could have sent your goons to stop the assassins without risking yourself. I'm not stupid, even if I don't talk all smooth – what do you want?"

The expression on the Illusive Man's face was extremely hard to read – then again, Shepard keenly knew she was bad at that anyway. He spoke a moment later, calmly. "Several things, Major. The first actually had nothing at all to do with you. Cerberus, as I said, has been cleansed – and there are tasks I needed to attend to on Arcturus."

He tilted his head. "I won't bore you with the details of how I got here, except to say that I obviously knew about your marriage plans long before last night's interview."

Liara's eyes suddenly narrowed. "And so did others, if the Broker and P. were both involved in sending assassins against us."

This time, Harper did smile, a flash of amused respect on his features. "Good to see you are paying attention to the little things, Doctor. Then again, it is very difficult to ascertain who exactly the leak to P. could be, given that Ahern summoned every single active N7 to this ceremony."

Shepard winced. She didn't want to think a fellow N would turn on her for some alien, but Torfan had already robbed her of that bit of innocence.

Sipping his drink again, Harper continued. "The second reason was more important – to remind P. and the Broker that this is my domain, not theirs – and that I live." There was a touch of pride in that statement, and Liara filed that fact away for future reference.

He extinguished his cigarette, and continued on."You do not have to like me or think my intentions are good, Major. But I am not, as you claim, a terrorist. I am a patriot – and I do what I do in order to prevent the Systems Alliance from turning into yet another nightmare stranglehold on the lives of humans the way the asari and salarian governments have."

Shepard gritted her teeth. "Bit late with that effort, don't you think? And I don't buy that either, given that your organization was involved with the shit."

Harper lit a fresh cigarette. "Have I lied to you so far, Major? Keep in mind – if it had not been for my interference – "

She cut him off. "Yeah, I heard that. But you also admitted you were cutting out. Like you said yourself, I was just a playing piece there. I don't buy your bullshit about the motivations, and I'm more convinced you were here for some other reason and decided to stop this hit on me just so you can try to use me later on." She waved her free hand at the door. "And the only reason I haven't screamed for the Commissars yet is I'm not a hundred percent sure that I may not need you."

She lifted her chin. "But don't think for a second that I'm going to trust you."

Harper stood, draining his glass. "Fair enough. The final reason I'm here – and talking to you – is to offer you a simple proposition. I'm more aware of what is transpiring in the SA than most. Very soon, you'll be exposed to information that will make you question your loyalties even more than you already are. There are elements in the SA who have very dark designs for humanity's future, and they are very powerful."

She snorted. "The President will take care of those assholes."

Harper smiled. "I have my doubts about that, Shepard. All I ask is that when you realize you are being played, you give me a call. I can answer many of the questions your superiors can't...or won't. Kyle trusted me. So should you."

He tossed a TTG snap-card down on the table between them. "I'd stay a bit longer, but I think I've disrupted your nuptials enough...and in a few more minutes, security will become very tightly uncomfortable. I'll be in touch, Shepard."

She sneered. "Kyle was cracking up under the pressure of what he found out. I'd rather be dead than work with you."

He shook his head, scrubbing out his cigarette. "Let's hope that doesn't happen, Major. Congratulations on your wedding." He turned, walking through a door in the south wall, and Shepard let out a long breath.

Liara glanced at her, features concerned. "Should we have stopped him?"

She shook her head. "An asshole like that never would pull a stunt like this without a fail-safe, Li. Besides, the bastard was packing, and we're unarmed. Probably had a biotic suppressor on him too."

She stood, levering Liara up with her, and glanced down at the TTG card.

Liara tilted her head. "We could let the Commissars know he was here."

Shepard felt torn. One the one hand, she hated people like the Illusive Man. On the other, if he wasn't lying...he'd been responsible for making sure they could catch Saren and Benezia – and possibly just stopped assassins.

"I...I don't know. He's a goddamned criminal, but the ugly reality is that he may have been telling the truth. If that's the case, I'd be stupid to turn him in. Like I said – I may need the fucker one day, given the other shit I've found out about the SA."

She picked it up the TTG card, staring at it a long, hesitant moment, before sighing. She crumpled it and threw it in the trash. "But I won't play his silly little games and I won't compromise who I am for goddamned 'answers'. Besides, this whole thing could be a stunt."

Liara nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps. Although I find it strange he wanted to talk to us so directly. It seems almost out of character for him to take such a risk."

Shepard thought about that, glancing back at the table, and then with a shrug took the man's left-behind back of expensive cigarettes. "I think maybe the point was to show he could get inside my goddamned wedding on the most secure station in Alliance space. He's good with the psychological shit."

She tucked the cigarettes into her uniform pocket. "At least the fucker has taste. Let's get out of here, marazul."

They wandered back outside, only to find Duke von Grath standing not far away, talking to a Commissar and two very heavily armed commissariat troopers. He glanced up as she exited.

"Major...there's been an incident."

She arched an eyebrow, glancing at the Commissar, who bowed. "Commissar-Colonel Quentin Rycek, milady."

Shepard turned to the Commissar more fully. "What kind of incident? One of the guests?" Her voice lowered. "Did Dunn do something stupid?"

Liara could not quiet muffle her snicker at that, but the Commissar only shook his head. "No, milady. We're here to secure the grounds – two teams of what appear to be assassins were killed about fifteen minutes ago in two separate locations. No one even knew they were aboard until the acoustic sensors picked up gunfire. By the time we got to the locations, we found two dead bodies. The initial security sweep found two more barely a quarter mile from here, also dead."

She glanced at Liara, who managed to keep her face still. "Assassins?"

Rycek nodded. "We picked up one of the hackers they used to get access to the station – he said he was hired by the Broker. Supposedly, the terrorist P. sent them on a mission – get inside the Sphere and kill Udina, your wife, and you."

Von Grath grimaced. "Disgusting." He stepped back a pace, talking quietly into his omni and putting his own knights irregular on alert.

Shepard sighed. "I don't want to be a bother, Commissar-Colonel, but do you have any other information? Are you sure it was P. behind this?"

Rycek shrugged. "It's hard to be one hundred percent sure, milady. We're still running traces and forensics on the bodies. But we definitely ID'd two of them – a marine captain, Jerrald Toni, dishonorably discharged from the DACT's Delta Squad, and another marine, Chief Jill Dah, FCW vet. Both were wanted for Commissariat questioning and are known associates of P's mercenary forces, and Toni was wanted for the murder of a Commissar. The other two are still unclear, but one of them had a Penal Legion tattoo."

She sighed. The name Dah sounded vaguely familiar, but she had no time to check it now. "So what do we do now?"

Rycek touched his hat. "For the moment, we're doing a tertiary security sweep – nothing has turned up so far...including who ever killed the assassins in the first place. We've stationed snipers and troopers around the perimeter of the estate – we ask that everyone stay here until we have cleared the area."

She nodded numbly. _So, the Illusive Bastard wasn't lying about the assassins at least. Shit._

Aloud, she merely wondered. "I thought that getting aboard Arcturus Station without authorization was impossible. I had to go through a complete dog-and-pony show, and some of my non-human and non-asari guests were very nearly strip-searched."

The Commissar sighed. "We are...investigating the issue, milady."

Von Grath bristled, finishing his call. "As well you should, young man. Keep your men outside the estate if you please – my own knights will secure the interior."

The Duke glanced at Shepard before looking back at Rycek. "The High Commandant is inside, I think I'll have a few words with him regarding the laxity of security. You may go."

The Commissar almost wilted at that, turning to go, and von Grath chuckled after he walked out of hearing range. "Can't help put take the piss out of those creeps. Have no fear, milady – no one will disturb your one day of happiness if I can do anything to stop it." His rakish smile reminded her of General von Grath's own smirk, and she nodded.

His voice dropped to a more serious tone, and he turned fully to face Shepard and Liara. "I trust our mutual associate is gone?"

Her expression darkened. "Yeah. Why in _fuck_ would you deal with someone like that, Your Grace?"

Von Grath sighed. "My son has told me you were blunt. So I will be equally blunt. Our family has lost a great deal of money and power over the years, in no small part due to fallout from our clashes with other noble houses. He's offered us a method to recover from this. I don't like him very much myself, but I am not fool enough to toss away salvation over scruples. Besides, these are … dark times." He tugged at his beard. "I cannot afford to make enemies of a man such as he."

Liara gave a small sigh. "It seems unwise to engage in business with such a man, Duke von Grath. You did not see the horrors of Cerberus first hand as we did, nor his cold-blooded betrayals of his own associates."

He grimaced. "That is true. Then again, the people he betrayed were monsters – perhaps the man found his moral center at long last."

Shepard grunted. "Yeah, and maybe the Red Sox will win next year's World Series."

The Duke gave a rueful smile. "Quite. In any event, I'm sad to say the amounts he offered for merely a chance to speak with you were too appealing given our Family situation – I could not turn that kind of money down. I know that sounds less than honorable, verging on mercenary, but as I've said before – one cannot eat honor."

She sighed, rubbing her temple with her free hand. "I won't argue with that. I don't like it, but it's your choice. And I didn't call for someone to arrest the bastard either – he could be useful, even if I want to put a hole in his head." She paused. "He said he had the assassins killed. That means he knew about the wedding in advance."

The Duke nodded, even as his son, Jason, approached. "Unsurprising. Then again, given who we are dealing with, he may have known for some time, milady."

The old man turned to General von Grath."Is the place secure, my boy? The Commissars said there was trouble – assassins and whatnot."

Jason von Grath tugged on his handlebar mustache almost nervously with his cybernetic hand. "Yes, a quartet of spectacularly dead cretins. One of them was cut in half, another shot sixteen times in the chest and head. Appallingly sloppy. As for the security situation...the Commissariat has things well in hand, as usual, and our knights are changing into battle armor from their formal wear."

The younger von Grath sighed. "It's almost disappointing, all this eating has given me the urge for a nice scrap." He glanced at Shepard. "I trust the festivities were not disturbed? You've been gone from the main hall for some time."

She shook her head. "No, I was busy talking with ..someone." She glanced at the older Duke. "And does he know?"

Duke von Grath sighed, taking in his son's look of perplexity. "No." He turned to Jason. "She was just meeting with..." He glanced around, then spoke lower. "Jack Harper."

General von Grath's features twisted in outraged distaste. "And why, precisely, is a filthy terrorist cockbag in our estates, father? I don't even think I want to know why he would want to talk to the Major and Lady Liara."

Shepard nudged Liara. "I think this is a, uh, family conversation. We should go."

Both von Graths frowned, then Jason shook his head. "I was looking for you, actually, Shepard. People were asking about you and Lady Liara in the main hall. Your fool of a team-mate is attempting to out-drink a krogan, I figured you could use a good laugh at watching Dunn poison himself."

She nodded, grateful for a reason to leave. "Yeah. We'll be there." She and Liara walked off, tied together, before Jason von Grath turned to his father, expression thunderous.

"That man is _directly responsible_ for the shit that happened on Akuze, the destruction of an entire asari colony, thousands of human and alien deaths, and God Almighty only knows what else. I knew you were getting a bit daft in the head but I didn't think you'd consort with trash!"

The Duke bristled, his ancient features hardening. "And while you were off gallivanting around, sleeping with all sorts of women and mugging for the ANN – and getting your units shot to pieces – I was the one having to hold the Family together so you'd have something to rule over, boy."

The younger man shook his head stubbornly. "I am neither so naive or so stupid that I won't admit our situation is poor – nor am I going to wax eloquent about the morality of taking money from the likes of him. But his vileness is not merely in his acts, but his ability to worm into positions of power. His interest in us means nothing good."

The Duke shrugged. "I know the man is vile – he's also the only one with the ability to help us recover financially, given that the Colemans have it out for us and none of the rest of the High Lords are willing to aid us."

He folded his arms, scowl fixed on his features. "We cannot afford to turn aside help, Jason. Especially not now. The President is going to get his fool head blown off trying to rein in the Manswells and we are no longer the force we used to be as a Family. The Navy is shot to pieces, the commoners are upset with rising prices and unemployment. This is no time for us to stand on being lily-white and pure."

General von Grath exhaled sharply. "I was already contaminated by Cerberus indirectly when they deceived me into running on the Northstar platform – I don't want anything else to do with them. If you choose to do this, father, it will eventually come back to haunt us. Nothing that man does is free or safe."

The Duke shrugged. "Nothing is in life, son." He let his expression ease. "Go back to the party. Dance with your doctor, drink and celebrate. Let me handle the distasteful things – you can always rebuke my actions after I'm dead."

Jason's expression flickered. "I'd rather not have to dishonor your name in such a fashion."

With a shrug, the Duke turned away. "You can't eat honor, boy."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Darkness was, among the yahg, often seen as the highest test of skill and cunning. The thick jungle canopy of Parnack filtered the hard white light of their star, but could never fully muffle it.

When the planet dipped behind the thick band of gasses and asteroids the yahg called Death's Veil, however, all sunlight was blocked for nineteen days. True night fell, bringing searing cold, and the native wildlife exploded into unrelenting violence.

Yahg in the olden days had huddled beside vast bonfires inside thick palisades, clutching weapons and gazing at the screams from the dark jungles – but occasionally, a hunter did not make it back to the fireside in time, and had survive on his own.

In modern times, with electrical lighting and thick walls, only a fool would go into the jungles during True Night. A fool, or someone seeking a _Name_. The Shadow Broker, before being plucked from his world by meddling salarians, had done so twice, giving him a reputation so fearsome that he was one of the few yahg boasting three _Names_.

As he sat in the shrouded darkness of his office, lit only by the constellation of status screens and haptic updates, he felt at ease. The darkness did not scare him, nor death itself. The Broker feared only two things – loss of control, and inability to react.

The reports on his desk bespoke of both.

Tetrimus had been shaken the most by the discoveries of his various teams regarding the Reaper threat, and as a result had expended the efforts of most of his own teams to find out more information. The most recent discoveries were gruesome in the extreme – just based on the digs his tech teams had done in haste, the Reapers had obliterated at least two hundred sentient races, with many more probably lost to time.

The repeated decimation of some but not all intelligent life simply made no sense, and Tetrimus was unable to find much of a rationale for why it happened, only the pattern – fifty to fifty-five thousand years, except in cases where the races exterminated were possessed of particularly high levels of technology, which seemed to shorten the time until the Reapers struck.

The Citadel seemed oblivious to the threat – their reactions so far were more along the lines of building a handful of new dreadnoughts, not looking for answers. Given the attitude of most of the galaxy towards archaeology – tomb-looting was too kind – it didn't surprise the Broker that the Citadel had not yet tumbled to the threat they faced. It was only serendipity that allowed a Broker team to find the scattered information that indicated the Reapers would not take the destruction of one of their own lightly.

Then again, based on what the Collectors were doing, there was a very good chance that the Reapers didn't know Nazara had been destroyed yet. His communications with the Collectors were often terse, almost mechanical, but they were poor at dissembling and almost brainless when it came to subtle intrigue. Sometimes they acted with more intellect and even a hint of malicious cunning – but most of the time they simply did one thing.

They collected.

They collected a maddening number of things, only one of which was genetic samples. They observed cultural trends, watched programming and artificially intelligence development, and were keenly interested in obscure mathematical research – especially higher-order math and hard dimensional physics. They kidnapped the occasional scientist and did obscure hunts for various pieces of recovered Inusannon technology. And they mapped and scouted systems far off the Relay network extensively.

These patterns made no coherent sense, but the Broker was hardly unfamiliar with that. Seemingly random and unrelated things could quite often form a larger pattern that could illuminate the information he needed. He was sure the answers lay within finding the common link between their collections and whatever it was the Collectors were designed for.

In essence, if he could understand the patterns, he could identify the tripwire – and possibly even bypass it. The first step was understanding, which was why he was now working for the Collectors directly.

In return for technology beyond the Broker's wildest dreams, the Collectors had asked him to conduct a series of tasks, the nature of which was ultimately very enlightening – and when the Broker connected the dots, equally frightening.

The Collectors were a trip-wire, a fail-safe.

He had reached this conclusion only slowly, and after thinking deeply on what information he had gathered – snippets of conversations the Council managed to have with the Inusannon AI called Vigil, the evidence he had that the Collectors themselves were obviously Reaper agents, and the fact that the Collectors were looking for things for a reason.

Reapers did not merely appear at set intervals, although there was a rough cadence to their arrivals. Over a third of the attacks Tetrimus had pieced together over the last million years had been in spans of far less than fifty thousand years. That meant something inside the galaxy was signaling them to arrive whenever conditions of some kind were met.

If the Reapers only invaded when something went beyond a condition, and the Collectors evaluated said condition, and the condition had something to do with the arcane mix of math, science and technology he'd pieced together so far, then it might mean pursuit of those fields was a Reaper weakness. Tetrimus had several tech teams working on that angle now, but there was hardly enough time for such efforts to pay off in the short term.

In the interim, the Broker had reached several conclusions based on the facts he had at hand.

_Fact_: the Reapers did not want all life exterminated, or even life that achieved spaceflight. They were only interested once a race – organic or artificial – began either demonstrating certain traits or mastered certain technologies, something to do with artificial intelligence, dimensional mathematics, physics, and biotics. Not all of these things were in conjunction – there was no link in their exterminations of races possessed solely of strong biotics, for example – instead, the combination of things seemed to be a large trigger.

_Fact_: the Collectors were not numerous. They had one powerful command ship and a host of smaller, nondescript vessels, but they were hardly a lethal army. There was fragmentary evidence they were at one time much more numerous, but his scientists clandestine sampling of fragments of the Collector DNA – painstakingly gathered by skin scrapings from carefully staged events – showed the strange Prothean DNA the Collectors were based on was unstable and the beings themselves mutated.

_Fact_: the Collectors were attempting to repair something. He had already ascertained whatever it was, this Beacon, was a communications device of some kind, one that Nazara had inadvertently damaged in its death throes. But if such a device allowed communication with the Reapers, why did Nazara simply not call for help instead of storming the Citadel?

His best theories were that the Beacon was just that – some sort of navigational aid, to allow the Reapers to return. Travel at FTL speeds from beyond the galactic edge would take centuries, and if the Collectors were concerned about the next two years, they wouldn't be using such a mundane methodology.

_Fact_: These repairs to this Beacon required both time and a great deal of rather arcane and rare materials and biotechnology, which he supplied at a stiff markup. The fact that they were willing to pay him in devastating weapons systems and suspiciously new-looking Inusannon power stars was not lost on his agile mind – whatever they gave him was hardly their best, which was worrisome if their technology level was that high.

The most concerning fact, of course, was the stilted conversation he'd just had with his 'contact' in the Collectors – they had instructed him to convince the Council that any Reaper threat would be decades if not centuries away, but that in no cases could he allow the Council to start building up forces over the next two years.

That was far too soon for his tastes, and limited his ability to react.

He pulled down another report on his desk, one from Tetrimus' tech team. Preparations to flee the galaxy were underway, but moving slowly. The sheer size of the required project was daunting, already running into the low hundreds of millions, and the task of snatching up valuable genetic material was proving time-consuming.

The current timeframe was four years. He'd demanded two and been told that was simply not possible. Four was cutting it very fine, with no backups if something went wrong. Six years would be better, eight better still.

By his current estimates, given that the Collectors were mostly concerned that the Council not build up its forces over the next two years, he would run out of time before that point.

He could, he supposed, simply act against them – inform the Council, show them evidence, and all of that. But he strongly suspected the political machinations of the asari and salarians would get in the way of any meaningful action on their part, and the geth alone had broken their strength.

Worse, not a single simulation showed the Council races – or even the entire united galaxy – being able to stop the Reapers. With no match for their horrific weapons, even if the entire galaxy united and devoted full strength to preparations, the best they could hope for was an ugly drawn out series of battles ending in defeat ten to twelve years into the fight. The technology gap was simply too vast.

No, best to simply go along with the Collector requests, to be assured that when the Reapers arrived, his organization would not be taken out in the first wave. It would take, at a minimum, a decade or more to obliterate all of the forces in the galaxy, after all – enough time for him to get out, as long as he kept his shipyard where the escape vessels were being built a secret.

The Collector request for the destruction of Shepard, on the other hand, made little sense to him. She was one human – a formidable foe on a battlefield, but inept in the ways that the Broker dealt in. The death of Tyriun No Kage had shown that no matter how powerful a foe, an anti-material rifle from a mile away is a threat hard to defend against.

The request implied there were things going on he did not yet understand, which he hated.

Taking Shepard out would be simple enough if he was fool enough to do so directly. Tazzik could certainly kill her in short order, as could Tetrimus. But that would simply announce to any fool with eyes that something was off – as a rule, he did not send his most powerful operatives out except in dire emergencies.

A more subtle approach was needed. And killing Shepard _without_ it linking back to him would be the tricky part. The good news was that there were others who wanted her dead, either to stymie elements of the SA or to stop her from interfering in ongoing operations. He could use said elements as cover, and then turn right around and sell them out to the SA or the Council, profiting twice.

Along those lines, he had agreed to send a few of his specialized freelancers along with a strike force of P's operatives for an operation on Arcturus, but only under the proviso that his own people would not get directly involved. The internal chronometer in his vision blinked as it was time for those operatives to check in.

He strode to his command plinth, overlooking sixty-odd status windows of ongoing operations, carefully arranged in a hanging display. Some were merely intelligence summaries, others were financial exchanges, banks, clandestine mercenary bands, research companies – the Broker Network spanned the known galaxy and indirectly numbered in the low thousands.

He tapped a control on the 'deniable operations' board, bringing up the coordinator. "Report on the Arcturus situation, sub-file three."

The glowing sphere of light that acted as his information coordinator swam into view. "At once, Shadow Broker. Accessing communications relays. Establishing link."

A moment later, a cheery voice sounded across the room. "Kasumi here."

The Broker almost sighed – this one was a very talented thief, hacker, assassin and her discretion was legendary, but her attitude grated. "Report."

Her voice dropped a few octaves. "I'm afraid the order fell through. The delivery was made on time and without complications...but let's just say the package never actually got to the front door." She must be someplace public for to use such euphemisms, he figured.

His many eyes blinked in rapid succession. "And your partner?"

She sighed. "Got away from the scene, but picked up at customs. Oh, and the shuttles that were supposed to relay the return merchandise back were … not optimal."

The Broker nodded sourly at this last bit of news. P, unlike himself, was notorious for covering his tracks by the simple expedient of murdering his tools when they were likely to get caught. Given that he recruited mostly among the desperate and the outcast, it was a working strategy, yet one that meant his people were not as good as the Broker's own.

Goto had been partnered with a tech-hacker known as Ghast for this particular operation – get P's assassins inside Arcturus close enough for the hit on Udina and T'Soni, and take out Shepard if possible – but he had expected the effort to fail in one way or the other. To hear that neither party of killers had even gotten close...

"And what was the root cause of the complications with the operation?"

Goto's voice dropped to a near whisper. "Based on the way they were handled? Dogs."

Cerberus.

The Broker very nearly hissed. Harper's interference over the years had become intolerable, and when Shepard had assaulted Cerberus and destroyed its headquarters he had thought the issue finally over and done with. But his operatives reported far too many baffling transactions in the financial networks in the aftermath of the fall, and his attempt to access a secure Cerberus data-store had turned into a nightmare, with sixteen dead agents and Tazzik nearly killed fighting off a pair of extremely deadly assassins – heavily cyber-modified agents that corresponded to the so-called Odd Couple, Kai Leng and Theo Pellham.

Cerberus was far from dead. And if Cerberus had acted to stop P's people, then either P's organization had a security breach, or his own did. "Who knew about this assignment?"

"On our side?" Goto's voice was thoughtful. "Well, my buddy – but then again, he's … well. You know. black hats probably have him, and that isn't the sort of thing anyone with a brain would want to get involved in."

He nodded to himself. An illegal hacker on Arcturus with no proper ID would be unlikely to live out the hour in Commissariat hands, and if that was indeed the source of their leak the problem had neatly handled itself. While connected to him tangentially, the Broker would simply claim the man was working independently.

He could also attempt to sell the task of finding who sent the assassins, something he would bring up with Shields later.

"And you were given the orders by me personally. Our business associate must have a leak, then."

Her voice rose to its usual cheerful register. "Yup."

He paused, thoughtfully. "Is it possible to complete the operation solo?"

She actually laughed. "Ha ha ha hya...oh. You're serious? Umm...let's go with _no_? The place is full of N7's, a krogan warlord, a pack of war priestesses, Admiral Ahern, and, you know, Shepard." She made a trilling sound. "Killing her brand-new wifey sure sounds like a way to get reduced to a smear. No thanks."

He rumbled, knowing his voice-edit software would edit that out. "Very well. Do you require extraction?"

"Nope. Picked out a ride to the Citadel already."

"Convenient. Once you arrive, proceed to Barla Von Financial. Ask to see the Security Director and inform her that the operation she was informed of is a go. Go with her and ensure that no dogs disrupt the event."

Her voice hardened. "And the pay?"

The Broker tapped some controls on the console. "I have determined the person responsible for Mr. Okuda's death. And an additional piece of information you might find interesting. Complete this task and I will inform you."

All the warmth and levity fled her voice, leaving it iron-hard and almost icy. "Very well. I'll be there soon. Goto out."

He clicked off, and returned to his chair to think. Cerberus interference could imply many things, but if they were acting to protect Udina, then that implied Harper had much higher access to the SA government than he had previously thought.

Then again, given the number of Cerberus figures in Shepard's life, perhaps he was protecting her and Dr. T'Soni. No matter. Such inelegant methods of dealing with issues were P's crass trademark, his own methods were more subtle.

He tapped another control, this one for his agent at the Bekenstein Refit Facility, Fifth Fleet. It took almost five minutes to get a response, and once he did he gave one simple order.

"Get aboard the Normandy and reactive the LINK components installed in the ship's cargo bay, remote activation and location beacon functionality only."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Shepard didn't have any further weirdness happen to her or Liara for the rest of the day, although she certainly engaged in some weird conversations.

The security lockdown had forced all the guests to remain on the estate, so everyone had eaten and then mingled. Shepard had been introduced to more than a few nobles and figures of note, then had spent time talking with Garrus and Telanya about their recent activities. She was happy to learn they were getting bonded soon as well,

She'd also spoken at length with Wrex, learning of what he found out about the situation on Tuchanka, and shared what she knew about Okeer. The big krogan frowned when he learned of the Broker's involvement. "I'm going to call Tetrimus and figure out what is going on. Broker doesn't usually go in that hard without a good reason."

She nodded. "Kinda what I figured. If I find out more – or get a fix on Okeer – I will let you know, big guy."

The krogan nodded, glancing around. "These people are soft, Shepard – but dangerous. Even the soft ones look like a warlord figuring out how many of his warriors will have to die on a long march to make the rations stretch. Watch yourself."

She wholeheartedly agreed with that – the entire situation was a little nerve-wracking. She and Liara passed some of the time talking with Liara's old professor, Professor Ranya of Clan Skywatch. The asari was an older matron on the verge of matriarchy, accompanied by an extremely young asari woman named Treeya.

"I am delighted that you were able to get access to the human Mars Archives, even if only haptic images. They are so dreadfully stiff about sharing such with us at the University." Professor Ranya smiled at Liara, who ducked her head a little before replying.

"If you like, I do have permission to share them with others to help in translation. Shepard can actually read Prothean – we are going to work on a translation template in our time off."

Shepard arched an eyebrow at this. "We are?" Liara gave her a look, and she coughed. "I mean, yes, we are."

The professor smiled gently. "That would be very useful, Lady Liara, but do remember you are supposed to be relaxing." She sighed. "I cannot imagine the horrors you have had to endure the past year."

Liara gave a half shrug, the best she could do still tied to Shepard. "I have learned a great deal as well, Professor. And I am thankful you taught me so much – I know it could not have been easy, dealing with the disapproval of the faculty in taking on someone like me as a student."

Shepard could remember, vivid snatches of Liara's memories with the Professor – one of the only kindly and encouraging people in her life. She smiled at the asari herself, making her voice as gentle as possible. "I'd have to say the same, Professor. I haven't met a lot of people in Liara's life I like, but if you ever need anything at all from me, I'll be happy to provide it. You are one of the few people who cared about her."

Ranya sadly shook her head, patting Liara's knee almost awkwardly. "I'm just an old fool, Lady Sara. And as much as I am saddened to know that Lady Liara will not be returning to teach a new generation at Serrice...I think she will be happier her, among our cousins."

The young asari, Treeya, looked eagerly at Liara. "Lady Liara, they said you actually visited Ilos – what was it like?"

Liara's smile flickered. "It was...sad. I was barely there an hour before the entire planet was destroyed. So much history lost – and who knows what else. There was a vast city that we landed in, and the bits of technology we saw were mostly Inusannon in make, not Prothean. We were..." She trailed off, not sure how to describe Vigil, then shrugged. "We discovered it was likely the Inusannon home world. The Protheans were there to harness Inusannon technology."

Shepard leaned back a bit, thinking. She should probably go back to the Citadel at some point and see if Vigil was still willing to talk to her – she had questions she'd had no time to ask back on Ilos.

Their conversation with the Professor lasted some time, until von Grath told her and Liara it was time for the bond-ceremony to complete.

By that time, Shepard was a bit shaky. Something about the cords caused a weird resonance between her and Liara, not a meld but more than a simple connection, and the emotions bouncing between them back and forth all day had her feeling exhausted.

She was alternatively happy and weepy, excited and nervous, and entirely emotionally worn out. Liara felt and looked much the same, subtle signs of stress visible to Shepard if no one else, and when von Grath cut the cords connecting them and handed them to Riala to place into the bracelets, she was relieved to have the use of both hands again.

Riala did something with warpfire, and a moment later dipped the bracelets into a bucket of water set by her side for the purpose of cooling them off. "On Thessia, this would all be done in the ocean, but … circumstances change."

She pulled out two golden bracelets, simply but beautifully wrought, deeply set with the cords of their binding fused to and inside the metal. "Among our people, one never removes a bonding bracelet except in times of dire need."

Shepard slipped hers on, as did Liara, and nodded. At that, a slightly drunken Dunn stood up. "You gotta give a speech, Sheppy."

She sighed. "Please, someone hit him." She burst out laughing when Wrex, Jackson, Ashley, and Tali – standing nearby – all complied, and more laughter rang out as he was knocked to his knees.

General von Grath glared at Dunn before clearing his throat. "Lords and Ladies, beloved cousins from the Asari Republic, honored guests, valiant warriors of Terra, Palaven, Thessia and Tuchanka." He paused. "And Mr. Dunn."

On the floor, Dunn sighed.

Von Grath continued. "I wish to thank you all for coming to this little event. It is not the usual noble wedding, granted, full of political intrigue and badly cooked hors d'oeuvres. Nor, much to my eternal chagrin, is it a traditional asari wedding."

He made a face of exaggerated sorrow, and many of the asari laughed.

He turned to Shepard and Liara, both standing a bit awkwardly. "But it is a celebration of what we have all achieved. I remember when Shepard saved my life after my cruiser crash-landed on Horizon. She went toe-to-toe with a Glorious batarian, screaming bloody murder the entire time. I'd never seen anything like it, and I never have since then."

He paused. "I owe her my life. As do, I suspect, more than a few of you. Some of you have served with her, or fought alongside her. Others only know her tangentially. I am here to tell you that she is the finest example of a Marine I know, and that I am proud to see her being recognized as she deserves."

He straightened. "With that, I'd like her to say a few words before we all depart – this soiree has run on rather longer than originally expected, and the media is probably outnumbering the police by now." He turned to her as the crowd gently laughed again, and she nervously looked around the vast hall.

"I'm not very good with speeches. Maybe it's because of how I grew up – not exactly the background anyone would want. All of my life, up until now, I've mostly been on my own. There have been a few people to have my back – Captain Anderson, General von Grath. My old CO, Major Kyle. My friend, Urdnot Wrex."

The krogan gave a flicker of a smile.

She exhaled. "But until about just over a year ago, I was … not the finest example of a marine, no matter what my old boss may think. I was out-of-control. I was angry. I was … lost. It doesn't really matter if I had good reasons for that or not. If I had continued on that way..."

She met the gaze of Jason Delacor, and she grimaced. "Well, it wouldn't have ended well." She looked up again, smiling a little. "The reason I'm where I stand today – why we're all here, instead of many of us lying dead on the Citadel – is the person next to me."

She took Liara's hand.

"I am really, really bad at saying what I feel. A lot of times, I don't understand it fully, or know how to get the words out right." She looked at Liara, the rest of the room seeming to fall away.

"But I know how to say this: Without her, I was lost. She is my life."

She could feel the emotions burning off of Liara, but shoved them down. "Since then, I've changed. I have a lot more people to support me now. I have people who have encouraged me, and are still encouraging me. I have been elevated to a station I'm not sure I deserve...but that I will try my best to uphold."

She glanced around the room. "And each of you – Ash, Garrus, Tali, Tel, Joker, and even my Commissar Jiong – played a role in that." She paused. "I owe Admiral Ahern a huge debt as well, for opening my eyes fully to the way I was acting. I owe Councilor Donnel Udina a huge debt, for taking the time to try to teach me what I didn't learn in manuals or classes."

The two men glanced at each other, Ahern merely nodding. Udina looked vaguely pleased, the woman beside him moreso.

"I don't have a whole lot else to say – except that I won't let any of you down." She paused, and then glanced at Liara. "Liara?"

The asari gave a little start, then worriedly looked out over the assembled people. When she spoke, her voice was soft, but distinct. "I am, I fear, little better than Sara at public speaking, nor was I prepared to do so. However, I do wish to say something."

Her voice grew in strength and hardened. "An asari bonding is a connection between two people, on every possible level. I have seen things my Sara has suffered through – the travails of her youth, the horror of war, the ugliness of watching those under her command die. There are those – bitter, hateful souls – who have condemned her for what she has done in her past, without understanding the pain, the agony and the self-hatred it cost her."

Liara's eyes blinked back tears. "She has suffered and bled to protect those who could not protect themselves. She was ruthless only to those who have demonstrated a lack of any decency, any respect for life – slavers, cruel pirates, and those who would destroy and use the weak. I do not think any of you understand the pressure she has always felt – and feels more of now – to simply do what is right."

Her voice rang out. "She is more than a soldier. I say this not out of some infatuated love, but out of what I have seen and experienced. I love her because she is selfless. I love her because she does not turn away from taking responsibility for her actions. And most of all, I love her because for far too long, she had no one to really support her."

Her eyes found David Anderson, and he flinched, and they sought out both Dunn and Jackson, both of whom could not meet her gaze. "To my relatives from Thessia, I thank you from my soul's depths for coming to see this ceremony, but if you want to truly honor me – then honor her."

Her confidence faltered, and she stepped back a bit. "I am happy this day, and happy those of you who came to join were able to share in it."

Von Grath nodded slowly, an unreadable expression on his face. "Very well said, Lady Liara." He turned to the crowd. "I thank you again for gracing us with your time and presence. As you may be aware, there was a security breach earlier today. The police and Commissariat are out in force – as you leave, my knights will provide you with a pass validating that you were here, which should allow you to get past the security cordons they have set up with no issues. A number of you are going to be staying here tonight – your rooms are already ready, and we'll have a short dinner in a few hours, assuming you aren't stuffed already."

He bowed formally. "The House of Von Grath has discharged its duty this day. Go forth in safety and honor."

The crowd began to fray, and Shepard took a shaky breath as she grabbed Liara's hand and looked up at the General."I didn't even think about where to stay, but the Kazan is in overhaul..."

Before the General could answer, the slender form of Commissar Jiong cut through the front ranks of the crowd, in a long red dress coat. "Milady Shepard, given the security concerns tonight, I took the liberty of once again securing lodgings for you – this time the penthouse of the Alxis Hotel. There is a vehicle outside waiting for you and Lady Liara."

Liara gestured to one of the side tables, laden with various gifts they had not gotten around to opening. "Will you also be handling this, Mr. Jiong?"

He sketched a shallow bow. "After checking for poisons, explosives, that sort of thing...yes."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Dammit, Jiong, no one is going to _bomb_ me."

The Commissar folded his arms. "I would prefer to not take chances. Commissar D'Alte is waiting for you in the car, as is the High Commandant, who wanted a few private words."

Shepard nodded slowly. She'd known de la Muerte was here, but hadn't seen him all day. She turned to von Grath. "...thank you."

Von Grath merely smiled. "Payback for, as you put it, stealing your doctor." His smile widened. "I am truly aggrieved that you managed to escape this day without being forced onto the dance floor, Shepard. I was very much looking forward to seeing if the asari could look upon such horror without bursting into laughter."

She gave him a glare, before turning to Liara. "See? I told you he was ungrateful."

Liara merely laughed, taking Shepard by the arm. "I am very tired and honestly an emotional wreck right now, General. Sara and I will need to rest and recover, but thank you for hosting this for us."

The general bowed. "The pleasure is mine – I would have never had such a fascinating discussion of Prothean relics with your old teacher otherwise. A very formidable woman."

Shepard narrowed her eyes and grinned. "Do I need to tell Chakwas you have a wandering eye?"

Von Grath gave her a sly look. "I don't know. Do I need to tell Lady Liara about the _celebration_ after Dirth?" Liara suddenly flushed deeply as Shepard muttered, and the man chuckled. "Ah, yes, asari bonding. Takes all the fun out of ratting you out, but I could still tell the media about the salarian..."

Shepard hissed. "Why you – "

At this point, a clearly amused Jiong took Shepard by her free arm. "Come along, milady. The High Commandant is hardly patient, and if we delay any longer the media is likely to assault the grounds."

Shepard sighed. "_Ugh_, media."


	22. Chapter 22 : After the Party

**_A/N: _**_Moar fluff. Some of the context of this is not going to be immediately apparent, but (as I have said many times before) you need background to pull shit out of your ass later and make it seem reasonable. _

_The Tali/Joker situation is one that I admit I haven't explored as I probably should - a lot of their interaction is offscreen because this thing is long enough without me writing it all out to that degree. I'm open to ideas about that (as well as other pairings) as long as they are unconventional pairings. _

_As usual, I'm interested in feedback of all kinds, particularly commentary on the pacing. I am aware some of you are waiting for the action, and it is coming, but I dislike shorting the time given over to the characters to actually be people. This is, after all, a fan-fiction - I can explore things here not possible in the game itself. _

* * *

_'In hindsight, I have no idea why I let Joker talk me into dancing. And if I find out which of my so-called friends recorded that vid and put it on the extranet, they'll need reconstructive surgery. A decade later and I'm still getting shit over that.' _

_\- Major-Commander Sara Shepard, 'Lay it on me'  
_

* * *

Aboard his pinnace, Jack Harper poured himself another glass of Wild Turkey, and then sat down on the comfortable adjustable leather seating in the main cabin, leaning back. "I trust the operation was successful on all fronts, Oleg?"

The cabin of the pinnace was luxurious – curved wood panels framed bronze hull segments, each one delicately carved with intricate flowery patterns. Thick carpeting covered the floor, and a leather sectional couch curved around the back of the room, set off by a small mini-bar and a complex of vid-screens and haptic displays. A small rack of powerful handguns was tucked into one corner along with several steel briefcases.

The man standing across from the Illusive Man shrugged his broad shoulders, his hard features set off by the narrow goatee he stroked. He wore a uniform loosely patterned off the older SA style, done in hard white and harsh gray, with orange trim here and there. His dark hair and eyes framed his rugged good looks as his voice spoke with quiet authority.

"Maybe. We've stymied the initial investigators, planted evidence that the STG was behind the hit in a bungling enough manner that the AIS will never buy it, and the funds we used were drawn from banks recommended by Trellani as those most used by the Justicar Order."

The man sighed. "I must admit, this was an _expensive_ operation. I understand the point of spending fifty million credits was so that the AIS would never think to look at human sources for the hit – no House or business could drop that kind of cash and not be noticed by the AIS – but it's still a LOT of money."

Harper shrugged. "It's only money. And all of what we spent I stole from the Manswells in my departure from the SA's leash." He lifted his chin. "The value of shock – not to mention the goodwill this will buy us – is worth it, Oleg." He paused to light a cigarette. "Shepard is a person who is manifestly untrusting, who feels as if she has been used and manipulated by those above her. She hates being lied to, she hates feeling helpless – and above all else, she is still naive enough to believe things can be 'made better'."

He gave a bitter, tired chuckle, and sipped at his drink. "Shepard must be cultivated if she is to be useful, and to do that, the best approach is to let her make her own choices. Those choices can still be manipulated by the actions that we decide to take – like hiring assassins to try to kill her wife, and then taking them out. The fact that it will look as if the Justicars chose to do it will not only make Shepard trust us more, but push the SA away from the Asari Republic."

He puffed at the cigarette. "Given her relative importance to my long term plans, the money is trivial. Recruiting Kyle went bad in a spectacular fashion, I can't afford a second failure of that magnitude. Besides, there are other ameliorating benefits from this action."

Oleg nodded. "Such as us having ordered the hit at all let us know exactly when P's agents would hit the station, thus making it look to both P and the Broker as if we had some magical ability to penetrate their ranks when we have none?" He nodded again, more slowly.

Jack sipped his drink. "The fact that it allowed us to gather valuable intelligence on how the Broker operated, as well as P, was almost an afterthought, but also important. Having Trellani actually dress up as a Justicar was brilliant, especially with the mask – no asari I can think of would dare to impersonate one, and the best lies are the ones dressed up as the truth."

Harper took a drag on his Compineros cigarette. "To sum up: We have Shepard's grudging gratitude, as well as Councilor Udina. We have shown that we can 'stop' P. and the Broker's actions in SA space effortlessly. We have made the AIS and by extension the President leery of the Asari Republic, or at least its Justicars – and possibly won some goodwill once Shepard lets them know of our interference. We have cultivated the von Graths as allies, and have a legit entry point for BenCore Enterprises first security contract. Finally, I managed to introduce Shepard and Doctor T'Soni to proper cigarettes instead of that cigarillo trash."

Oleg gave his boss a strange look, then gave a guffaw of laughter. "Ah, dealing with the important things in life, I see." His mirth faded. "The AIS will push on this – as will, I suspect, the Broker. At least one of the Broker operatives was able to escape the system, we think. I doubt that P. will be delighted his agents were slaughtered so easily, and it won't take either one of them long to figure out who stopped their agents. They may try to strike back at us."

The Illusive Man shrugged. "There is little we can do about that, but our advantage in being so weak is our lack of exposure. We have very few personnel to strike out at, after all. The important thing is that we remain independent this time, so we can clear out the pack of incompetent Illuminati-imitators that have nested deep within the SA governance."

He stubbed out his cigarette. "I made the mistake before of assuming the greater dangers were from without the SA. I won't make that mistake twice."

The Cerberus general gave a sigh. "Other than that, what few agents we have report things are nominal. As you requested, Brooks is on Arcturus, keeping an eye on Shepard and the asari woman, to make sure no real assassins get through. Dr. Minsta is checking into the batarian situation, Trellani is handling banking concerns with your programmers, and Dr. Chandana is working her way into the investigative research committee on the Reaper wreckage on the Citadel. Kai, Pel, and Miranda are in transit to New Minuteman." He paused, eyes narrowing. "As you requested, none of the three were informed we were behind this assassination attempt to begin with, and were singularly unimpressed by P's personnel."

Harper nodded. "And until I say otherwise, we'll keep this between me, you, and Trellani. Dr. Minsta, in particular, should never be told – his aristocratic honor is at stake, and he may take offense."

Petrovsky snorted. "Have you determined how you plan to restructure the organization, given that Florez and Williams are now dead?"

The Illusive Man nodded. "I have. There will be three primary cells, as before – one for specialist military operations, run by yourself. One for economic and intelligence matters – I am probably going to put Miranda in charge of that. And the science section, by Minsta. But all report directly to me. I have had enough of operations going off the rails due to lack of oversight – the mess on Teltin was the last straw."

Petrovsky sighed. "Teltin went bad due to Williams' interference, sir. And we were able to … salvage … most of the children."

Harper grimaced. "I am not a soft man, Oleg. I understand sacrifices have to be made at times to ensure our survival as a species. But as a rule, I shouldn't have to use words like 'salvage' and 'children' in the same sentence." He leveled a finger at the general. "No more rogue operations. If it happens again, the force you are building is to clean them up ASAP. The new Cerberus cannot afford a dark reputation if my plan for the long term is to be successful."

Oleg nodded. "Pel, at the least, will be happy to hear that."

Harper sipped his drink calmly, glancing at a status readout on the far wall of the pinnace cabin. "Another hour until we reach the relay. And on the topic of the force you are building, what is the status of creating at least a direct reaction force? Miranda, Kai and Pel cannot do the work of an army."

Petrovsky sighed again. "It will take a good amount of time. I'm looking at several possible frameworks, but nothing will be ready until five or six months out." He folded his arms. "Vetting people is taking an inordinately long time. We've started some recruitment in the fallout of personnel of the Battle of Port Hanshan – many were stipended off by the SA rather than the government spending money for full cybernetic repair, the cheap bastards."

He folded his arms. "We've picked up a handful so far, but only a couple stand out. One is an N5 Fury, Randal Ezno, heavy biotic CQB type. The other is an armor captain and DACT, Jacob Taylor – Miranda's taken a bit of a shine to him." He shrugs. "It's progress, sir, but it will take time – and money."

The Illusive Man gazed at him with his glowing blue eyes and nodded. "Take the time, Oleg. We can't afford a second infiltration of our ranks as we did with Florez and Williams. Leave the money to me."

**O-ATTWN-O**

In the aftermath of the actual wedding, the core of Shepard's guests – Tali, Joker, Ash, Dunn, Jackson, Anderson, Kahlee, Wrex, Aethyta, Garrus, Telanya, Chakwas, and General von Grath – met up with Shepard and Liara at the hotel Jiong had rented for them, in the penthouse.

The drive to the hotel was marred by the chat Shepard had with High Commandant Jaquin de la Muerte. He had risen higher in the ranks since her Penal Legion days, where he was the base Commandant – they had met when she'd kicked a Commissar in the balls and took him on in hand to hand combat for one of them abusing Shields.

He'd been incredulous that a Z2 would risk her life in such a fashion, and rather than merely take the Commissars word for it, had investigated – and found Shepard was acting in good faith, and the Commissar in question was more than a bit overzealous. He'd found Shepard's hate for what she had been, and her crudely stated but firm intent to protect the weak interesting, and had kept a close eye on her since then.

His expression as she and Liara gotten into the luxurious black Commissariat groundcar had been his usual. His Hispanic features were fixed in an iron mask – expressive, almost angry black eyes, aquiline nose, and hard features set. Rather than wear the elaborate finery of his office, he wore a simple Marine undress fatigue uniform with a plain black overcoat much like Jiong's, and a heavy red and gold sash around his waist. His cap lay beside him, revealing his shaven head.

"Major-Commander Shepard. Lieutenant Commander T'Soni. Congratulations." As always, his voice was cool, quiet and dispassionate, and she nodded as she got in and scooted to make room for Liara.

"Thank you, sir. It's good to see you again."

De la Muerte's expression shifted to the sardonic. He glanced over his shoulder as Jiong got into the front of the car to drive, and nodded. "I trust you haven't kicked any more of my Commissars in the unmentionables recently?"

Shepard gave a weak laugh. "No, sir."

He nodded. "Good. I'm here to pass a message, more than anything. Although I certainly decided to come along for the wedding itself – it is very rare one of our Z2 fully redeems themselves, and almost never in such a spectacular fashion. The only other person who has had their Z2 completely lifted was Zaeed Massani.

She nodded. "Stopping Saren and Benezia wasn't much easier than what Massani did on Gravalax."

He inclined his head. "True enough." He shifted in his seat. "It is also pleasant to meet you, Lieutenant Commander T'Soni. Too few of the asari who have immigrated to the Systems Alliance have joined our ranks. Perhaps now that one of their Thirty has chosen to do so, more will be inspired."

Liara gave a wan smile. "I fear the Council of Matriarchs was less than receptive to my marriage and membership in your military and has barred me from return to my home. I am not sure how much of a member of the Thirty I am, any longer, Commandant."

De la Muerte snorted delicately, anger flashing in his dark eyes. "Their loss, our gain. We will try to treat you more civilly."

Liara smiled wider at the heat in his voice. "Your people already have. And as long as they treat Sara with the same care, I will be as loyal as any other citizen."

He arched an eyebrow at that, then shrugged. "As a Commissar, I tend to believe people get what they deserve, be that a fiery execution or hard labor in the Legions. There are no extenuating circumstances in the view of the Commissariat aside from total, complete ignorance of what an act would entail. Shepard made choices – probably the only choices she had besides death, but they were still her choices, and she had to pay for them."

Liara opened her mouth to reply and Shepard put her hand over hers. "It's okay, Li." She matched gazes with the Commandant. "I know the things I did as a ganger were bad. I remember every murder, theft, arson, and worse. I've moved beyond that."

De la Muerte nodded. "Yes, you have. As I said, most do not, and end up backsliding. No matter. To address your wife's concerns, I certainly have no intentions of putting Shepard into harm's way any more than her duty as a Spectre and Special Forces soldier would entail."

The High Commandant smiled. "Marcus Hazred was very impressed by your answers – and your fire – in your command in-briefing. And Commandant April Visan, the commander of Commissars Jiong and D'Alte, has been equally complementary."

She nodded. "They – Alfred and Susan, that is – do a good job." She shrugged. "I didn't think Commissars acted the way they do...or that they came from such hard, fucked up backgrounds."

De la Muerte gave a thin smile. "Now you know why many of us are so intolerant of crime. As to their actions, well...Commissars are tasked with many things to ensure the stability of the SA. As political officers aboard a battlegroup, their primary task is ensuring that the battlegroup answers to the SA and not the whims of it's commander. The best way to do that is assisting in stabilizing you. You are an asset of the Systems Alliance, we cannot afford to lose you."

His words called to to her mind Harper's smug declaration that they were just chess pieces, and she exhaled. "You said you had something tell me, to pass a message?"

He nodded. "Those of the Commissariat who set our path and direction are aware of your dislike for criminality. It is an admirable trait." He glanced out the window, at the approaching hotel in the distance. "But be very careful that such zeal is directed only at the correct targets, and keep in mind what Hazred told you about the necessity of some actions."

She shook her head. "I get that some things have to be done in the name of survival, sir. And the crap the aliens are doing is worse. But a lot of what I found so far is way beyond that. It's inhuman and it has to stop."

The High Commandant sighed. "And if it comes to that, Shepard, the best I can do is say that the Commissariat will not try to stop you, but will be equally unable to assist you. Those you are likely to come in conflict with are nobles, like yourself – and the Commissariat has no authority over the nobility."

She gave a disgusted snort. "I lived all my life thinking the nobility didn't do much of anything – how are they involved in this?"

De la Muerte spread his hands, a thoughtful expression creeping over his features. "In many ways that statement is correct – the nobility rarely, if ever, acts directly. But many of the programs you brought to light and made Major Chisholm aware of appear to have been at least given tacit approval by the High Lords of Sol. While they do not formally meet or act on anything aside from issues of noble honor or the granting of lands and titles, their influence is still very strong at all levels of the SA."

The ground car pulled up in front of the hotel. "I'm not saying _don't_ look – that is the President's task for you, after all. But one Commissar has already died in this search, and very few have the nerve to have one killed so openly without fear of Commissariat retribution. The fact that someone wanted you and your wife dead this day should drive home the point that you are a threat in someone's eyes."

She nodded sourly, and Liara had a worried look on her face. "I'm a big girl now, sir. I can take care of myself. But thanks."

He gave a small chuckle. "I saw you could take care of yourself the day you made a hardened Commissar scream like a girl. Take care of yourself, Shepard."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Shepard had been to parties, of course, in the term of her career. Mostly they were thrown at von Grath's instigation, as he was a firm believer in liquoring up his Marines both before and after a big fight – and his unit got into big fights all the time. A few times Dunn or Shields decided to have a little shindig for one reason or another.

At these events, Shepard usually just drank and tried not to be conspicuous. Being a Z2, she had nothing outside the military, and unlike the rest of her friends, who were Z1's and thus could actually have a life, she didn't have anyplace to go but to the barracks unless she wanted to sit in a jail cell and have the Commissars glare at her.

It was Joker's idea, as it eventually turned out, to have a party for Shepard and Liara after the wedding. The wedding itself was too formal and stiff to really enjoy for most of them, not to mention (despite Shepard's protest) that it was recorded for later transmission. At the Alxis Hotel, however, there were no prying eyes.

Jiong's commissar lancers guarded the elevator leading to the penthouse floor, and the floor itself – a huge penthouse room and four VIP rooms – were given over for Shepard's use. When she asked Susan how Jiong kept reserving entire floors without her ever seeing a bill, the Commissar almost saucily licked her lips.

"You'd be _surprised_ what hotel owners will do to avoid Commissariat inspections."

Thus, Joker (with a bit of help from the mess sergeant of the Kazan, who – excluded from the wedding and faintly critical of the typical cooking – had happily agreed to cater) set up a celebration for Shepard.

While Jiong had been driving, Susan had led a security team through the gifts Shepard had received, finding nothing amiss (or at least biologically hostile or explosive.) Shepard and Liara, when they arrived, were sent to the penthouse, where Wrex's strength was put to good use in hauling in a simply gigantic case of various alcoholic drinks...and a decanter of jaaki.

Dunn had burst out laughing at the sight. "Goddammit, turtle, you _still_ drink that hanar tea shit? Man the fuck up!"

The krogan had 'accidentally' stumbled into Dunn, sending him sprawling into a seated Ash's lap. He looked up, ran his fingers through his hair, and put on a rakish smile. "Well, hello beautiful."

Ash sighed. "Permission to slug your former teammate, Skipper."

Shepard waved negligently. "You don't even need to ask."

Dunn hastily retreated, and Wrex set the heavy cooler full of ice and drinks down. It took a few minutes for everyone to get their drink of choice (with the exception of Kahlee, who decided to instead sample the jaaki) and stand in a loose semi-circle.

Joker started a toast to Shepard, and one by one they spoke of how she had changed them – Joker finding vindication for his struggles, Ash being supported and encouraged, Garrus and his quest for validation. Tali spoke of the immense respect she had received and Wrex grudgingly admitted the ride had been fun, and that it was nice moving in and out of SA space without a hassle. Telanya spoke quietly of Shepard trusting her and vowing to prove her worth, Chakwas exasperatedly talked about her inability to not be shot to pieces, and both Dunn and Jackson expressed amazement at how much she had changed.

General von Grath spoke only a few words. "There is nothing I can say to honor this woman enough except this: you have had to deal with, as you put it, far too much bullshit in your life. I'm glad that others see your worth, and I will always be there to support you, upon my Name."

Finally, Anderson lifted his drink. "To Sara. Hero of the Citadel."

After the toast, there was more drinking. Joker had put together a montage of video clips of some of the camera footage of the most insane fights they'd had before the shift to Colossus armor, including the first fight on Eden Prime with Shepard rage-punching the Prime into the ground. They ate – hot dogs and hamburgers, with dextro shakes for Tali and a dextro steak for Garrus prepared by the mess sergeant.

There was talking, and Shepard found herself laughing and at ease for most of the night, simply able to relax and enjoy herself for perhaps the first time in her life. Most of the gifts they received were simple enough things – clothing, guns – but Anderson had gotten her a scale model of the Kazan, and she personally though the best gift was from Tali, who'd gotten her an upgraded omni-tool packed with combat programs.

Dunn got her a new Penal Legion blanket, which she threw at him in faux outrage.

And eventually, against her will but prodded by Joker, Shepard attempted to dance, and ended up hanging her head when, of all people, _Garrus_ couldn't contain his mirth and burst out laughing so hard he fell over, gashing his arm seriously enough they called for a medic.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Several hours later, the party had wound down. Anderson and Kahlee had retired to one of the VIP suites, as had Garrus and Telanya – their arguments over a hotel had never found a solution, so Shepard had them stay there. Von Grath and Chakwas had gone off drinking – Shepard was slightly ashamed that at the point where even Wrex was shitfaced, those two were tossing back shots of vodka like water and didn't even seem drunk.

Shepard and Liara had retired to their own room, drunk and giggling, before falling on top of the bed and pulling off clothes. For once, Shepard didn't let herself worry, and they joined as one again, half-lost in a backdrop of pain and muffled moaning. The meld was recklessly deep, each of them busy chasing pleasure and sensation and uncaring of the damage they did to their bodies, until the pair of the collapsed, unable to figure out who was who for almost an hour.

They'd spent another hour in a mix of sex, melding and confusion, before they simply lay back on the bed, gasping and barely able to think or move. Shepard had recovered first, pulling out the first aid kit she'd lugged along to patch them both up, before tossing the ruined sheets into the omni-cycler and processing a fresh set.

Liara had fallen asleep after that, exhausted but happy, and Shepard tried to do so as well, but sleep eluded her. Instead, she lay half-propped up on the huge bed in the main suite bedroom, Liara curled up against her.

She spent what seemed like an hour gazing out the huge windows on the north wall at the stars beyond. A thousand hues of gold, white, red, and blue, they burned without a twinkle, hard and uncaring against the blackness of the sky. Processing her thoughts, her emotions, the fallout of the day.

A part of her felt emotionally empty. She'd been forced to engage with people in a way she didn't have to before her ascension, and while it was hard, it was also rewarding. She felt good, she felt happy, and for the first time in her life, she felt like she was not only making a difference but in control.

She glanced down at the asari nestled against her, Liara's face peaceful in sleep, and smiled helplessly. She had the next two weeks, give or take a few days, to settle down – check out the house on Intei'sai, relax, figure out exactly what she and Liara could actually cook. The very domestic nature of the tasks ahead of her made her want to burst out laughing.

Of course, if tonight was any indication, some of that time on Intei'sai would be spent setting up a medical bay in their home.

She was about to lay back and try to sleep when her omni-tool chimed softly. Frowning, she slid out of the bed, grinning at the way Liara flailed a bit then clutched the pillow she'd left behind, padding across the room to pick it up.

Tapping it, she spoke quietly, as she moved into the next room. "Shepard here."

The voice of President Windsor spoke. "Are you decent, Major?"

She flushed, and coughed. "One moment, sir."

She glanced around, then snatched up one of the heavy white terry cloth robes the hotel provided, wrapping it around her nakedness, and hurriedly ran her fingers through her hair to sort it. It resisted, and she gave up. She checked herself hurriedly in the floor length mirror on the far wall, adjusting the robe to cover up the few visible bandages, and then headed to the main suite area.

An errant lock of hair fell into her face. She shoved it back, huffing in exasperation – it was the middle of the night, after all – and walked over to the nearest vid screen and patched the omni to it, bringing up Windsor's image.

He was dressed in some kind of silken robe himself, in a wood-paneled room with a fireplace visible over his shoulder. His eyes were tired and his features less composed than the patrician mask he wore in public, and he smiled as she came into view. "Ah, Major. I trust you were already awake?"

She nodded. "Yes, Your Majesty. Tired from the day...still a bit drunk, but awake. Hard to sleep." She focused on her words, and he nodded in what looked like faint amusement.

"I do say I dread the day my father puts his foot down and has me married off – God only knows who he'd suggest. Be thankful you make your own choices in life, Baroness."

She shook her head, both at the idea of one of the most powerful men in the SA being forced to marry anyone, and the image of how much pomp would surround such an event. "I can only imagine, Your Majesty. How may I be of service?"

He sighed. "I do apologize for the lateness of this call, but I fear I spent the entire day in various ceremonial activities, and literally just managed to retire to my home. I wanted to give you a call to congratulate you personally on your wedding."

She smiled. "Thank you, sir."

He nodded. "I regret that neither I or Eliza could attend. It sounded like a fascinating insight into asari culture in some aspects, and I would have very much liked to meet Lady Uressa." He sighed. "Perhaps if I had been able to attend, the Secret Service protection I rate would have prevented the attempted assassination...although the assassins seem to have been stopped quite handily. I've had Prince Aloxius look into the matter – all I can tell you is that whoever set this up paid, according to the Broker, at least twenty-five million credits."

Shepard nearly fell over at the sum. "...wow, someone wanted us dead pretty badly."

He nodded grimly. "Prince Aloxius says the sum may have been higher, actually. The Broker didn't know, ultimately, who the party behind this event was – evidence we've recovered so far from the one captive suggests the STG."

She frowned. "Why would the STG want Udina, Liara, and me dead?"

The President's features hardened. "I very strongly doubt they do. This appears to be a weak attempt to shift the blame. The AIS has already reported no corporation or Family in the SA has moved any sums of money close to that amount to the banks that the funds for the hit came from since before you planned to get married. The bank in question, by the way, is one commonly used by the Justicars for field expenses."

Shepard gritted her teeth, then exhaled. "I see. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose." She paused. "Your Majesty, there's something you should know. At the wedding, I was interrupted by – " She hesitated, then shrugged. " – by a person who turned out to be Jack Harper."

Windsor's eyes widened. "The Illusive Man was at the wedding? How did he get in?"

She shook her head. "Doesn't matter. What does matter is that he claims his people were on Arcturus and were the ones to kill the assassins. He claims there are people high up in the SA who will not let you clean house, and that they might have had something to do with the assassination. I guess that answers how the fuckers knew about the wedding, at least."

The President rubbed his chin, leaning back. "I see."

She glanced around, picking up the pack of expensive cigarettes the Illusive Man had left behind, and lit one. "Yeah, well, I'm honestly kind of torn on what to think. One hand, terrorist scumbag. Other hand, he did serve up Cerberus to us, and drop the assassins, as well as give us the key to Saren's location."

Windsor folded his arms. "It is late, Major, and I'm aware you are probably tired from a long day – but your points raise a key question. Mr. Harper is a complicated figure – I believe it was his intel that fingered the situation in the Lenal System, and we know what that uncovered. He seems to be making an attempt to be helpful. Do you trust him?"

Shepard blew out smoke, thinking hard. "No idea, Your Majesty. The guy is far too slick for me to get any kind of read on … and I'm not exactly a master at figuring out motives of others, either. He may be trying to be helpful to avoid me venting his skull...and he's been successful at that so far. I let him go at the wedding, after all."

The President nodded. "Probably wise. I doubt one such as he would have shown up without precautions against capture." He rubbed his eyes. "For now, just enjoy your respite from war and duty, milady. The batarian situation is delicate but still not at the proper boil for me to justify sending you in, and the Citadel has not yet reported any firm fix on this Ylana person's location." He tilted his head. "Out of personal interest, what do you plan to do with your time off?"

She smiled. "I have come into possession of a house on Intei'sai, Liara and I are going to move in and get settled." She shrugged. "Given we will be operating mostly in the Traverse anyway, it's more likely for us to dock at Pinnacle than Arcturus. And more out of the way, less reporters."

He nodded. "I see. The Court of Lords informed me you had requested your landing upon that world, which they approved – a minor Class I colony but on the path to Class II. A good choice, if more nobles would take an interest in such worlds, we'd have less wildcat colonies, perhaps." He shrugged. "In that case, I merely wish to pass on my congratulations to you and your wife, and wish you a restful and safe period of leave. If you need myself or Eliza, you may comm the Office of the Presidential Communications and say you have a CASE KNIGHT."

She recorded the phrase and nodded. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

He gave a thin smile. "Thank you, Major. Have a pleasant night." He clicked off, and she sighed, rubbing her face before heading back to the bed. She paused on the way there, though, to send Aethyta an omni-tool message, letting her know that the assassins may have been sent by the Justicars.

She figured the matriarch would be the only person who could figure out if that was true or not. Putting it out of her mind, she laid back down, sleep quickly claiming her.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Tali spent the early part of the night in nervous preparation. More than once she gave serious thought to doing this another time, but managed to overcome her nerves and continue on.

She was pretty sick of nerve-stim, and she wasn't about to spend her leave a miserable mess because she was nervous.

She'd had a series of long talks with Kiala, and had started both the injections and herbal medicine routines. It had only been a couple of weeks, but the last time she'd taken her suit off in the Kazan's clean room, she had been able to do so without coming down with sniffles and nausea later that day. Kiala had been amused at her rate of preparation, making several barbed comments, but had also spent a good hour going over with her how to apply everything she'd need.

The SA paid its lieutenant commanders fairly well, and she had nothing else to spend her money on, so she had blown the month's pay she'd received on ordering high-powered dextro antibiotics and immuno-booster packages. She'd carefully checked the maintenance schedule for the Kazan, and none of the work crews would arrive on the ship for two days.

She'd shot up just before the wedding, since the materials required hours to get into her system and begin working, along with a final round of the herbal pills that tasted so vile. Any second thoughts she had were blown away when she used the required hormonal extract, as it was also a fairly potent aphrodisiac.

Kiala had not told her this. Probably on purpose.

_I'm going to kill her. Assuming I survive this._

After the party broke up, she gently took Jeff's hand and lead him to one of the empty VIP rooms, working hard not to fidget. Jeff had a slightly confused expression on his face, which made her want to laugh, but she fought that down and sat on the chair in the room.

"We...we need to _talk_."

Joker sighed a little, sitting down across from her. "I guess we do. We never really figured out what we're going to do about … us." He winced. "I mean, it's not like – "

She shook her head, silencing him. "No, I figured out what I need to do. It's just a matter of finding the nerve to do it." She found herself laughing, and wondered if she maybe had a bit too much of that turian brandy, then shrugged. "What I need from you is to just follow me and don't ask any questions."

Joker raised an eyebrow, and she folded her arms. He finally laughed, standing up. "Alright, Tali. Do I get to know where we're going, at least?"

She nodded. "The Kazan."

He frowned. "The hell we need to go..." His expression shifted, and he gave a nervous smile of his own. "...oh. _Oh_."

She waited, and then he shook his head and gave her that smile that always made her feel warm. "If you're sure, Tali. I..." He paused. "I don't want you thinking this is something you have to do."

She shook her head, refusing to twist her hands together, trying to keep her voice calm. "If I can't do this, then what am I? This … this suit isn't me, Jeff. And I'm as tired of being alone as you are. This is not you pressuring me – you never even mentioned anything more than liking to see me out of my suit."

She swallowed, and he carefully put his arms around her. "Trust me, I'm not protesting. It's just strange to have the girl chasing the guy to bed."

She snorted. "Let's get moving."

The trip to the Kazan was made mostly quietly, the auto-taxi humming along the metal paths of Arcturus with silent speed. Joker sat next to Tali, his expression neutral as she nervously explained the steps she had gone through in boosting her immune system, her reactions, and her ability to deal with dextro-levo shock.

She finished by the time they arrived at the docks, deserted at this time of night except for patrolling AESIR security mechs. She stepped out, followed by Jeff, who had to be more careful in getting out, and then gazed across at the Kazan.

Joker's face was almost blank. "Let me get make sure I understand this – what you are doing is dangerous, isn't it? You could get very sick from just taking your suit off, much less having me..."

He trailed off, and she shrugged, but nodded.

"And you're going to do it anyway? To … what? To prove to me I matter?" His voice was a mix of upset and something else, and his eyes were worried and almost ashamed.

She smiled behind her mask. "No. Because I want to. I know in a lot of ways I'm impulsive." She glanced away, biting her lip, then back at Jeff. "My father says I need more maturity, more grounding in consequences of making big decisions."

Her voice softened. "Maybe that's true. But I just want...one night of … me. Of being a person, of being someone that's wanted, instead of 'good engineer' or 'daughter' or some other stupid label people have for me."

Her voice wavered. "Like I said. I'm...tired of being alone."

Jeffrey Moreau glanced at the smaller alien women, then at the ship, then sighed. "Alright, but if you vomit on me in the middle of this, it's going to _totally_ kill the mood."

The walk into the Kazan was a mix of nerve-wracking and, to Tali's amused surprise, almost erotic anticipation. She was terrified, but it was an exhilarated kind of terror, and the warmth of the turian brandy had now expanded to encompass her whole body. The hormones had kicked in, making her break out in a thin sheen of sweat, her suit kicking up the climate control to compensate.

Upon reaching the clean room, she smirked. "I'll go first...then you. You'll have to strip naked and pass through the first lock to get inside...I configured it to not be too abrasive."

Joker rolled his eyes as she cycled through the secure lock, then pulled off his shirt. "This has to be the most trouble I've ever gone through to get laid …."

Almost an hour later, Joker lay heaving and panting on the plastic sheeted bed, trying to make his brain work again. Tali lay next to him, one shapely leg flung over him, the alien planes of her face flushed with a mix of pleasure, fever, and yet slack with exhaustion. Her beautiful glowing eyes were closed, as she breathed rapidly and shallowly.

He considered the situation.

On the one hand, his hips and back and knees and probably ribs were causing him some serious pain. He was almost sure he'd sprained his wrist when she'd evidently had her first orgasm, and it felt like his whole body was a single bruise. It didn't help that Tali had small, but very sharp claws – his back had more than a few shallow, seeping cuts in it. And his hips. And his shoulders.

On the other hand, he was never, ever bothering to fuck anything except quarian chicks in his entire life, even at gunpoint, from now on. He'd slept with a couple of women, but he had never had an experience like that.

Tali had been shy, gentle, frantic, confused, and completely unsure of how to make love, and that had put Joker in charge. Every bit of her body was so different and so like a human woman's as to make everything new. He had to experiment to find the areas that turned her on, and the ones that drove her crazy. And she had gone crazy indeed.

It had started gentle, and ended with her legs wrapped around him hard enough that he felt his spine creak and screaming as she shuddered against him over and over before literally passing out. He felt good about that, as a man. Banging a chick so hard she fainted was impressive enough even if your skeleton wasn't composed of Cheese Whiz and cotton candy.

He coughed, wondering how the shit he was going to get out of here, and decided to wait until Tali woke up. It felt incredibly good with her laying against him, she was hot – much warmer to the touch than a human woman – and it made him feel sleepy.

"...why plastic sheets, though?"

With a murmur, Joker pulled the sheets over them both and closed his eyes, trying to slow his breathing and rest. The pain would make that hard, but sooner or later he could get back on his feet and shoot up some pain suppressants. Tali coughed weakly, and he frowned, gently wrapping his arm around her. He was worried she'd get very sick from this, and he should have probably got her awake and back into her suit...

She snuggled against him.

He closed his eyes. It felt too good to just pretend he was normal, she was normal, and life was good. He gently stroked the quills of her hair, and her eyes flickered half open for a second. "Jeff.." A second later and she closed them, a happy sigh spilling from her slender alien lips.

He kissed her.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The day following the wedding was one of people picking themselves up from the wreckage and figuring out the damage. Shepard and Liara didn't wake up until almost noon, staggering into the shower and bandaging themselves up before heading to the lobby. Jiong's people would clean up the room, most likely – he was fairly paranoid about anyone finding out the things Shepard and Liara got up to in bed. His caution was a trait Shepard found comforting rather than off-putting.

You couldn't really be called paranoid if people were really out to get you, after all.

In the lobby, she found Jiong himself, standing with Pressly, smiling faintly as the people checking into the hotel gave them a very wide berth. "Ah, Baroness. Glad to see you are up and around. I've already had my people prepared to, ah, sanitize your rooms."

Shepard snorted. "Whatever. Good to see you both here – is there anything I need to know about from the two of you?"

Jiong brushed lint off his sash. "You requested a private FTL capable shuttle or pinnace. The Commissariat has several – unarmed, of course. Your records indicate you have the capability of piloting such – it will get you to Intei'sai in roughly a day and a half, assuming you travel leisurely – faster if you go flank. I've gone ahead and made sure it is provisioned and ready to depart in dock berth A71 at your leisure."

Pressly smiled. "Just a last minute status report, ma'am. I've discharged the crew and notified the captains of the battlegroup everyone should be back on Arcturus itself no later than Friday night, just in case they want us to ship out early. BuShips will start inspecting the ship in two days, and secondary refit crews are in place to do some additional work on the frigate engines and touch up the core on the Kazan itself, as well as retrofit that fuel system issue Tali found."

She nodded. "Sounds like everything is well in hand. You have plans, Jiong?"

Jiong sighed. "No, not really. Commissars rarely have personal time. I will most likely remain on the station, reviewing the PRIDE reports on the crew and preparing detailed dossiers on the fleet captains. I've been notified that, barring any further exigencies, Commissar D'Alte and I are to be commended for our progress so far and will be promoted to Commissar-Colonel in a few weeks."

Shepard smiled. "One small step, then. Congrats."

He inclined his head. "Indeed. Having a mere captain as your personal Commissar for someone who basically ranks as a rear admiral is seen as insulting – it is likely, as soon as you make full naval captain, that we will be promoted again. Assuming you go farther, it is not unlikely they will pull us for full Commandant training...and mental reconditioning removals."

She nodded. "Well, I hope that happens soon. The way I act, I don't need you trying to off me the next time the SA decides to sell me up the river."

The commissar coughed, briefly touching his cap. "...eloquent. If there is nothing else, milady, I will be about my business." He turned sharply and departed, and Shepard chuckled.

Pressly shook his head. "I never thought I'd like a Black Hat, but that one is solid enough." He turned back to face Shepard and Liara, smiling. "I'm glad this is over and done with so you two don't have to sneak around. I assume you guys are going back to Intei'sai for your honeymoon?"

Shepard laughed. "Such as it is, yeah. You?"

Pressly ran his hand over his balding pate, sighing. "Not sure yet. My son contacted me yesterday – he's a Marine with the Second New Edo, and my ex-wife finally got around to telling him about he divorce. He's pretty angry about it, but he's having some issues with his own wife about the same kind of thing, and he wants me to come visit him." Pressly folded his arms. "Not sure if that will do any good, but I don't want him going through what I have."

Liara gave him a smile. "I am sure, Mr. Pressly, that whatever wisdom you can impart to your child will be welcome." Her smile faded slightly. "I often wish, at times, I had heeded more of my own mother's advice."

Shepard snorted. "And not your father's?"

Liara's eyes narrowed. "My aithntar's most useful _feedback_ so far has been in terms of 'best ways to bang human females'." She only colored slightly as she said this, but appeared to take delight in Pressly coughing in embarrassment and trying not to laugh. "I will reserve judgment on her other advice, Sara."

Shepard only grinned. "You have this knack for taking conversations to strange places, Li." Turning back to Pressly, she shrugged. "Sounds like everything is wrapped up. We'll probably be back in a bit over a week – sadly, there is crap I have to do here that will eat into my free time. If you need to get into contact with me, both Anderson and Aethyta have our TTL."

Pressly nodded, and saluted sharply. "Enjoy your honeymoon, ma'am." His expression grew slightly more stern. "And at least _try_ to stay out of trouble."

She quirked her lips, letting her weight fall back on one hip, and folded her arms. "No promises."

**O-ATTWN-O**

The rest of Shepard's day was consumed with various paperwork, meeting with the Admiralty – in person – and other administrative garbage, leaving Liara alone to spend time with her father.

She found Aethyta at the hotel she was staying at, having what sounded like a hostile and terse conversation with an absolutely ancient-looking asari wearing the blood-red accouterments of a very senior Justicar. Her father's voice was sharp and liquid with fury. "I don't give a damn about the ever-fucking traditions, you dried up fishcunt. You fuck with my daughter, I will _execute_ every last one of your goddess-damned pack of killers, think I won't!"

Liara belatedly recognized the figure on the screen as the leader of the Justicars, Justicar Mistress Layana. The ancient asari gave Aethyta a wintry smile, her left eye replaced by a dark black iron circle of metal bolted almost crudely to her skull, ugly burn scars trailing down her face and jawline. "Ah, child. Your threats mean nothing to me. If I wanted your offspring dead, she'd be in two pieces and you'd be soon to follow." Layana's smile widened. "If some of the more zealous of the Sisterhood decided to act without my permission, as I said, each Justicar is traditionally allowed the latitude to do so."

Aethyta snarled. "The Council of Matriarchs made it fucking clear she was off limits!"

Layana folded her arms, smile shifting to a sneer. "And so? They do not countermand the Code – nothing does. You fail to understand, child. I do not care if she is innocent or guilty, if she is in human space or asari, or if she has opened her azure wide to some outlandish alien in hopes of escaping our grasp. All that matters is that your bondmate, Benezia, was a filthy traitor and that by the Code, her daughter must pay for her crimes."

Aethyta shook her head. "You people are completely insane. If you do that you will have war with the Systems Alliance, I _swear_ to Athame you fucking will. That's assuming Shepard doesn't send your punk-ass assassins – or Justicars – back to you in a napkin."

Layana laughed in her face. "Spare me. I am supposed to believe the humans are stupid enough to go to war over a single filthy pure-breed tramp who is the daughter of a traitor? Perhaps you have spent too long tending bar and watching Aleema's strippers on Omega, Aethyta – you did not used to be this thick."

The Justicar Mistress's ancient features finally slipped into a more normal facade. "As for this Shepard person, I will say the main reason we have not simply entered human space and brought your daughter to justice is that the Butcher vows for her, and both the Justicars who have met her and our Commissariat cousins claim she is righteous when it comes to dealing with the criminal. Do not mistake our lenience for fear – or even caution. The Code fears nothing, and we are the Code."

Aethyta's fists were clenched tightly enough that her nails were digging into her skin. "Fuck your Code. I'm done with this conversation, Layana. Don't fuck with my daughter." She killed the connection, heaving with anger, and Liara walked up closer.

"Aithntar?"

Aethyta let out a long exhalation and turned to face Liara. "Sorry you had to walk in on that, kiddo. Shepard shot me a text late last night – your President found out the people most likely behind the pack of assassins sent after you were the Justicars."

Liara's face twisted into confusion. "But why would the Justicar Order want _Udina_ dead? Or Shepard?"

Aethyta sighed, sitting on the couch. "Babe, do you really want a lecture on asari politics at this time of the morning, and from me of all people? Short answer is simple: this is all tradition driven. Benezia spent almost a century as a Justicar herself – she had a turian lover back then, and he was murdered by a criminal syndicate she ended up destroying. Her betrayal would have been bad enough for any asari, but as a former Justicar it's really fucking intolerable for them."

The older asari walked into the small kitchen area, pulling out a bowl of fruit from the small fridge and began to dice it up. "A lot of the older Justicars think you should have been handed over to them from the get go – and to them, Udina and Shepard are the ones who prevented that. I can't think of anyone else who'd want him dead, actually, not in conjunction with you."

Liara nodded slowly, sitting down on the couch in the main room. "And so the Justicars are still going to try and kill me?"

Aethyta snorted. "It's one thing for them to mess with you when you were an asari citizen hanging around on Shepard's ship at her say-so. If they'd killed you then, I doubt the SA would give a shit, honestly. Now? You're an Alliance citizen, and an officer, and married to one of their nobles. That's an entirely different ball of kelp. It's probably why they resorted to assassins – if they do it themselves, it would be pissing in the Alliance's face."

She finished slicing up the fruit, laying it out on a plate, and walked back towards Liara with it. "No one likes being pissed on."

Liara smiled faintly as her father sat down. "How long will you be staying on Arcturus, aithntar?"

Aethyta shrugged. "A while, actually. I have enough money to keep this place for a year at least, before asking my sister for more cash – sold the bar, not headed back to Omega anytime soon." She ate a bite of the flame-pear, chewing it before continuing. "I figure that I ain't gonna live forever, so if I want to be in your life I'd better do it now rather than later."

Liara smiled wider. "I am glad you did not decide to, as you put it, run away and hide again. There is a great deal of guidance I should have received from mother that … I never got." She sighed.

Aethyta grunted. "Kiddo, I'm not very good at the whole guidance thing. I've always tried to live my life by a couple of simple rules. Don't say or do anything you won't back up with your fists, and never turn down a drink, a fuck, or a party, because you could die tomorrow. That's not the basis for a successful life." She gave a bitter laugh. "Which is why I'm the way I am now."

Liara frowned. "Your earlier life, building up your mercenary companies, your vision of militarizing the Republic more – these things tell me that you once were successful."

Her father shook her head. "And look how that turned out."

Liara folded her arms. "Yet with the threat we now face – the Reapers – the traditional asari methods of echelon formations and commando ambushes will be insufficient. We have the numbers, the power, and the technology – our people will have to be the vanguards in stopping any assaults on our galaxy."

Aethyta said nothing for long seconds before sighing. "I wish it was that simple, Liara. The ugly truth is that I'm not entirely sure that my mercenary bands went entirely bad on their own. There is every possibility that the Council of Matriarch's sabotaged my followers, because I was gaining too much power."

She grimaced. "It's that suspicion that drove me to abandon Benezia and you when the mess first exploded. I couldn't risk the chance of those bitches trying to take us both down. I was a threat to their control, and so was Benezia – and the more I think about it, the more worried I am the Council was too determined to see you dead." She looked up.

"While you're on your honeymoon, do me a favor. You two figured out where you're going yet?"

Liara nodded. "Intei'sai. It is near Pinnacle Station, in the eastern fringe of human space."

The older matriarch nodded. "Before Nezzy and I split up, we had a place in the Traverse, on a deep space trading/fueling station called Negation. Run by Eclipse fuckers, she used it to do outreach to outcast asari, and I did recruiting from there. I haven't been there in over a century, but I was digging through old records on my way here and realized it was still sealed up – the station had been billing us for it all these years, paid out of some account of Benezia's. From what I can tell, Nezzy went there as late as ten years ago for something."

Aethyta folded her arms. "I think Nezzy knew something, and that whatever it was, on top of me fleeing and you giving her problems and issues with the Triune may have driven her over the edge to take up with that Saren freak. Do you think you can run by there and check the place out? I'd do it myself, but getting in and out of the SA is a goddamned hassle."

Liara nodded. "It sounds somewhat dangerous, this station – will they object to Shepard?"

Aethyta snorted back laughter. "Not if they like breathing, they won't. Like I said, it's mostly a refueling stop orbiting a gas giant, place for ships to dump charge and take on HE3, food, and news. Lots of people go through there, and most of them mind their own business. I can't think of any reason why Nezzy would keep paying for the place unless she'd used it for some reason."

Liara bit her lip. "And you think there may be useful information there?"

Her father ate another piece of fruit, and shrugged. "Who knows? Can't hurt, and you guys will probably have to stop to refuel someplace anyway." She looked over at Liara. "Enough of that. How was your wedding night? Could you walk after Shepard got done with you, or does she need some instruction in the bedroom too?"

Liara shuddered. "Please, no. I am not entirely sure I trust you with Sara in that capacity."

Aethyta shot her a look. "You don't trust me with your hot wife? Ungrateful child." She chuckled, leaning back, and gestured to the plate. "Eat, kiddo. Gotta keep your strength up if you're going on a week-long fuckathon with Shepard, after all."

Liara closed her eyes and gave serious thought to the concept of headbutting for the first time in her life.


	23. Chapter 23 : The Chocolate is mine!

**_A/N: _**_I'm not sure of the direction this is going in. The chapter started out at 7k and has somehow grown to twice that. I've been tinkering with it most of last night and this morning. I had to stop myself from adding any more little details. The desire to write the particular character towards the end of this chapter has been with me for a while, and I finally gave into it._

_The Tali piece was something I wanted to put in earlier, but the last chapter was already huge enough. Putting it in later wouldn't make much sense. _

_Since many of you don't use my site (logicalpremise dot org) I'll repeat here the announcement I made there. _

_There will be two new updates to the OSABC line up in the next week or so._

_First up is due to a request from **AlsoKnownAsMatt**, the ANN Media Archive. This will be mostly story-based interviews (as opposed to Westerlund style, text only transcripts) with Emily Wong and various people in the story as it moves along. The first interview will be that of Emily and Shepard when Shep announces her marriage to Doctor T'Soni. The second will most likely be Wong's interview with Liara in the immediate aftermath of Shepard's death._

_The other new feature will be the STG Files : Benezia Incident, a pack of STG related stuff — profiles on OC's and modified minor canon characters, STG backstory and investigations into Saren and Benezia, and some ideas of what Benezia and Saren were up to prior to ME1. Like the Cerberus Files, the STG Files is told from an in-universe perspective, but the writers are not all terrorist racist nutjobs, so it's far more unbiased than a Season of Sorrows Unending._

_If you guys and gals who read this have any more ideas - about this chapter, ATTWN in general, or the new stuff coming up - review or PM me and let me know._

* * *

_'Life has a funny way of surprising you with the little things. Maybe all that siari crap about everything being connected for a reason is right. After all, if I hadn't run into Shepard the first time we met on Negation, she'd have killed my ass dead-bang the second time we met.'  
_

_\- Morinth of New Omega, 'Chasing Zero to Infinity' _

* * *

The first few minutes of day after the wedding was a mix of sensations for Tali, both miserable and wonderful. She awoke shivering in the clean room of the Kazan, aware of a certain delicious stiffness and soreness in some muscles of her body, not quite sure where she was for several seconds. As she slowly woke up, she realized she was clinging to Jeff, still naked, before coughing heavily enough to wake him up.

As if the cough was a signal, she abruptly realized that she was feeling like crap. She was running a fever, breathing was hard, her sinuses were completely clogged and her head was pounding. Plus, she was so dizzy she had to lean on Jeff for stability as she tried to put her suit on, which was dangerous for him as well. It took her, even with his help, more than a few minutes to get herself cleaned up and back into her suit, which wasn't helped by Jeff's concentration wandering as he took in her naked form again.

That made her feel good, the way he clearly loved watching her. Flashes of the night before made her quills tremble and her skin flush with heat as she got dressed under his gaze. To be honest with herself, even given how bad she felt, she had half a mind to see if she could lay with him again - but she decided that could always happen later. Better to get her suit back on and let the onboard medical systems figure out how bad off she was before she did anything rash.

Sure enough, as soon as she had it sealed up and connected, her suit-omni basically shat itself when it linked to the cybernetic sensors in her skin and read her medical condition.

A four degree fever, sinus and chest infections, high instances of allergic reactions, and the always lovely 'foreign material contamination' were the highlights - she tried not to think about the last one too much. She kicked off a basic round of medical assistance - strong antibiotics, antihistamines and pain suppressants, mostly - and then focused on making sure she could stand up on her own, trying to figure out how she was doing.

On the one hand, she was pretty damned sick. On the other hand, she wasn't nauseous, and what she'd experienced the night before was well worth some fever and a runny nose. No matter how crappy she felt, it was all she could do not to burst out laughing at how good last night had felt.

_I guess I'm not a little girl anymore. _

She glanced up at Jeff, taking in the worried expression on Joker's face as they left the clean room. Coughing, she managed to dredge up her most cheerful voice, although it was pretty hoarse. "I'm okay, Jeff. More than okay. I'm fine."

He gave her a look as if she'd lost her mind. "Tali, you just said you are running a huge fever, you're coughing non-stop, and you can barely walk. We're going to find a doctor."

She shook her head, unable to wipe the smile off her features as images of the night before continued to pour through her head. "No, we aren't. I have to get used to you, and to this, for me to ever get past it. I feel like crap, but it's not going to kill me – my system is just...really being a bosh'tet right now. Kiala says it will pass in a few hours. A doctor can't do much more for me than I've already done for myself with the meds I have."

She coughed again. "If we get back to the hotel, I've got a few more things that will help"

He frowned. "Alright. But...look. I really enjoyed that. I'm happy you got to get out of that suit, but I'm worried about your health. I don't want to lose you with you trying to prove anything to me."

She nodded. "I'm not trying to prove anything, Jeff. I ... I am going to live, and if I'm part of _your_ life I can't stay in this damned suit the rest of my life. _Especially_ after last night. Let's just get back to the hotel - I'm sure I'll feel better after I rest and take more medication."

Joker sighed. "Fine. Just...let's be careful, okay? We'll go slow. It's not like a fall would do me any good either."

It took a while for them to get through the ship, the two of them slowly making the trip through the deserted, darkened corridors of the Kazan as carefully as possible, Tali gasping and coughing most of the way. They had just reached the main elevator when Tali's omni-tool went off.

"Shit. It better not be your dad." Joker's voice was tense as he opened the doors to the elevator, helping her in. Once they were inside she went ahead and answered.

"Hello?" Her vision was too blurry to make out the tiny text of the caller's name, but the voice was recognizable enough.

"So, princess, did you make yourself a real woman yet?" Kiala's voice was almost amused sounding, and Tali burst into completely hysterical giggles.

She ignored Jeff's bewildered look, killing her external speaker and subvocalizing as best she could. "Yes!"

A tiny bit of the always-present hostility in the other quarian female's voice subsided. "I honestly didn't think you'd go through with it, Zorah. One rarely turns their back on the Flotilla."

She sighed. "Are you crazy, Kiala? I'm doing it again as soon as my body stops acting like a fool!"

Kiala burst out laughing herself, breaking into a cough a few seconds later. "I'm sure your bahnt is happy about that." Her voice lost it's levity. "More to the point, I got the first shipment of the medicines and hormonal extracts you promised me. I am... grateful to you, Tali'Zorah."

Tali smiled, shrugging as the elevator came to a stop. "I... can I call you later on today? I have something I'd like to ask of you."

The other quarian agreed, and she clicked off.

It took another hour and a half for them to make it back to the Alxis Hotel, but even so by the time they got there Shepard and Liara still weren't awake. Joker mumbled something about lazy-ass CO's, and Tali merely suggested they head up to the VIP room so she could take more medicine.

Once they got back in the room, Jeff took a shower while Tali took some more herbal pills and allergen suppressant injections through her medical port. Those helped clear her headaches and vision at least, and lessened the pain. She checked her medical readouts, happy to see that the suit was compensating for her condition, and decided after she called Kiala she'd lay down and rest.

She spent a few seconds trying to breathe more evenly before pulling up the commlink to Kiala up on the video communication terminal set into the front wall of the room. She waited several seconds, and when the signal finally went through ended up seeing Dost instead.

"Good morning, Lieutenant Dost."

The big man smiled, his hair matted tightly against his skull, and sipped a massive mug of something hot and steaming. A different wall hanging, this one of quarian ships against a gas giant, was visible over his right shoulder. "Hey there, Miss Zorah. Sorry, Lieutenant Commander Zorah. How's it going?"

Tali decided that shouting out she'd had sex twice in a row and then fainted was simply not appropriate, and instead managed to contain herself. "I am having a _very_ good morning, aside from coughing. And please...just call me Tali. I hardly feel as if I have earned my rank in the Alliance Navy yet."

Dost laughed, shaking his head. "You helped bring down Saren, fought geth, and got your leg shot off - I've known people that didn't do that much as ensigns. You deserve it. Any reason for the call - not that I mind seeing you, but it's still early here."

She nodded. "Sorry. I was hoping to talk to Kiala for a bit. She called me earlier, but I was, ah, busy. Is she still around?"

He nodded, smirking. "Busy, huh? Heh. Yeah, she's out back, working on the air filtration unit. Damned thing's going out again. I just got up myself but she's been awake for at least an hour, hang on." He wandered off, leaving the link open, as Joker padded out of the bathroom area dressed in a thick white robe, painfully staggering to the bed where he'd left his braces she'd made him.

She gave him an exasperated look. "Jeff, I made the braces waterproof – you don't have to take them off to shower."

He shrugged. "I know. I just wanted to see if I could still walk on my own. Having them on had made me forget how fragile I am in every other way, and that isn't safe for me to do." He smiled, but there was more than a trace of pain in it, and she felt her eyes tear up at the sight. He took off his robe, revealing bruising in several places – probably from her cybernetic leg – and she winced. She had to be more careful, if she didn't want to hurt him.

He put on a set of boxers, then his braces, and had just gotten his robe back on when Kiala sat down in front of the screen. "Ah, princess. That was quick, I figured you'd call me later today. You wanted something?"

She nodded, waving Jeff over. "Yes. I wanted to introduce you to someone. Jeff, this is Kiala'Shaan xal Terqis." She used the formal term of an exile, and Joker picked up on it. "She's been helping me with adjusting to, well, things. You know. Um. Kiala, this is Jeffrey Moreau."

Kiala inclined her head, placing her fingertips together in the formal greeting quarian travellers used. "Ah, yes. Your bahnt. A pleasure to meet you, human. However, Tali's introduction will soon be in error, as I will be Kiala'Dost kal Caleston." She in turn used the older quarian term for one who lived on a world rather than a ship.

Joker raised both eyebrows. "I'm guessing you are getting married? Congrats. People call me Joker, because of my winning personality."

Kiala's glowing eyes narrowed faintly. "So I have been told." She turned slightly to face Tali. "Now, you said you needed to discuss something?"

Tali nodded. "My ship is going to be in dock for almost two weeks, giving me nothing to do. I had originally planned, I guess, to head to the Citadel, and maybe see my father – but he's going to be busy with the Flotilla and won't have time to see me."

She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice, but Joker instantly scowled. "What a dick. Can your dad not act like an asshole for even a few seconds?" Joker's voice was both sour and sarcastic, and Kiala burst into laughter again.

"Ooh, he does have a winning personality. I like him already. Yes, Mr. Joker – Rael'Zorah is indeed a 'dick'. I am not surprised he has no time for his own daughter in the face of the quarian people attempting to settle a world, but I am certainly surprised Tali would be expecting anything else."

Tali nodded, coughing for a second, and shaking her head to clear it. "I guess I'm not. I thought about just staying on Arcturus – the people are pretty nice here, and no one gives me weird looks or asks me if I stole anything. But I sort of blew most of my cash on the medicines, and Arcturus seems like an expensive place to stay. Jeff wanted to see his parents, and we are planning to do that... but that won't take more than a few days."

She put her fingers together. "Tiptree isn't that far from Caleston. I was thinking we might visit with you?"

Kiala tilted her head. "Why would you want to visit me?"

Tali sighed as softly as she could. "Because you're my friend. Or at least, I'd like to think that. So is Mr. Dost, he saved my life. And I don't have that many friends who aren't on the Flotilla."

Kiala's voice was wary. "And why wouldn't you just go back to the flotilla, princess? Isn't that where you belong? You still have not completed your Pilgrimage, after all."

Tali shrugged, coughing again. "Mainly because I'm not about to deal with my father if he has no time for me, but ... I have other priorities now. I'm not going back there, not right now."

_Maybe not ever_, the treacherous little thought in the back of her brain whispered.

She shook her head. "And going back to see those people, my old friends, now...I'm not ready for that. They're focusing on other things right now, and not a single one of my so-called friends has even sent me so much as a omni-tool message or TTG asking if I'm okay or not. I'd rather spend my time with people who at least want me around."

The other quarian woman folded her arms. "I never thought to hear such as you say that, to turn your back on the Flotilla. And pardon me if the idea of you visiting me sounds ridiculous, the princess and the outcast as friends. Why would I want you around, as you put it? What do you really want, hmm?"

Tali slumped slightly. She didn't really expect Kiala to ever trust her or like her, but she had hoped maybe she could at least sit and talk with her in person. She didn't have many female quarian friends back on the Flotilla - most girls her age were either intimidated or jealous, and the few who weren't were also admiral's daughters, under even worse pressure.

Auntie Raan was always nice and kind, but Tali was keenly aware she was also an Admiral, and much like her father, put her duty to the Flotilla before anything else. Having an older quarian to ask questions she could never ask her stiff and cold father would be nice.

Joker put a hand on Tali's shoulder, frowning. His voice was sarcastic and hard. "You could give her dad some competition in the 'massive asshole' department, you know. Tali told me about some of the crap you went through, Kiala. Way I look at it, you guys that rebelled may have had a point, or maybe you were wrong. But it's in the past. You're not the only person who doesn't fit in - I went through some of the same shit. I could get pissed off about how I was treated by a lot of people, but I decided a long time ago I really don't give a damn what people think if they don't want to know the real me."

He glanced at Tali. "I know what it's like being an outcast. I'd think you want all the friends you can get. Or, you can be an evil bitch about it, and Tali can feel rejected – will that make you feel better about what you went through? To hurt someone who hasn't done shit to you except try to help you?"

Kiala jerked as if stung, and Tali almost said something, but Joker's voice hardened and he kept talking. "Is that what this is about? You think if you are cruel to her it will make up for the fact you got thrown the fuck out of your fleet? She's had enough shit in her life without someone she clearly wants to be a friend with question her motives. Are you just going to be a smaller, dickless version of her dad?"

Kiala said nothing for several seconds, and then sighed, looking away from the screen. "I apologize. I was...I am wrong to say that. Life is not easy for me, for Dost. You cannot know the pain and pressure I have been under. The isolation. The casual cruelty, the higher prices, the suspicion of others. Being alone. Caleston is _not_ Arcturus, and people here are not very friendly to quarians – and Dost has been facing more than a little discrimination for being with me. People have accused him of spying on the Alliance for the quarians, or worse." She looked down. "But that is no excuse."

Kiala exhaled sharply, gazing at Tali. "I _am_ a bitch. It's what kept me alive in the months following being thrown out on my ass. It is why I wasn't raped and killed in the years since the Revolt. People have claimed to want to help me before only to take advantage of me, again and again. People have said they were my friends before, and turned on me. It is not easy for one such as me to trust, especially when you blithely walk into my life from nowhere offering everything I need and asking nothing."

She hesitated. "And I will admit a part of me hates ... just being associated to anyone involved with exiling my clan and throwing us to the r'tezhi."

Kiala shifted her shoulders. "But you've done nothing but try to help me. And ... I will not act as the bosh'tets aboard the Flotilla would. I am sorry. I would be glad to have you visit with us, as narrow is our hospitality is likely to be. Money is tight – and Dost doesn't want to sell Troyce's ship until prices improve. We have little to offer, and our home is not large. But you are welcome."

Tali nodded, coughing again, and kept her voice cheerful and calm. "Thank you, Kiala. I'll comm you when we get to Caleston. And...I appreciate what you've done for me. I know it's probably hard for you to trust. I didn't know things were that hard for you...and I guess to you I'm still a silly girl, too stupid to think about what other people are suffering. But even if I am a silly girl, I know what loyalty to my friends is. I hope that maybe when we get there we can figure out a way to help you two out... and show you that I can be trusted. I'll see you soon. Kee'lah Selai."

She cut the link off before she could say anything to mess up more, and sighed. "That didn't go as well as I hoped." She glanced up at Jeff. "It always comes down to people judging me based on things out of my control - being quarian, my father, something. Is it something about me that makes people act that way?"

Joker sat down across from her, taking her hands in his own. "Hey. You can't make people not be asshats, Tali. You're a great person. You're kind, you're considerate, sexy, smart, thoughtful and honest. Have I ever judged you that way?"

Tali shook her head, and he continued. "If Kiala can't see those things about you, and her excuse is that she's had a hard life, sorry, but I don't give a shit – so has Shepard, and look how she ended up. If you use that kind of excuse to be an asshole, people are going to treat you like shit all your life - it's one of those self-fulfilling prophecy things."

Tali nodded. "I know that." She pulled one hand free, rubbing her hip where her cybernetic leg hooked in. "It's just that all my life I've been isolated from others not in my circle. I leapt at the chance for Pilgrimage because I wanted out. I've never had a chance to see what life is like with all the safety rails my father threw up around me removed. I wanted to see things for myself."

She sighed. "And I thought by now I'd be homesick, but the more time I spend away from the flotilla, the more I realize I felt smothered there. I want friends I can talk to, like I talk to you - but too many people just see 'quarian' and ... I don't know."

Joker frowned. "Even the people on the Normandy, or the Kazan?"

Tali shrugged. "Shepard tries, but she's so busy. Liara is always nice to me, but we never really _talk_. I don't interact much with people outside of engineering, and the bulk of engineering treats me with respect - but they don't really talk to me. Mr. Casey does, but half of what comes out of his mouth is untranslatable anyway..."

Joker shook his head. "That dude has the strongest Arcturus accent I've ever heard. And now he's got the other engineers saying 'seen' all the time."

Tali laughed, then shrugged. "It's not that I can't talk to people, but I don't have any _quarian_ friends I can reach out to. Like I said, the people I thought were my friends on the Rayya haven't even called me once." She looked up at Jeff. "I know Kiala has had a hard life – and my father had a big role to play in that. But she's still a good person. She's isolated and alone, just like I am now - I can't imagine she doesn't need a friend just as much as I do. She's gone through things I haven't yet, and I think she could help me out and give me some advice I need."

She thought back to the revelations from the truth geth. "And honestly, after hearing the truth about the geth and my people's role in our own exile, I don't know how much I can trust my own leaders anymore."

Joker nodded, taking one of her hands again. "Yeah, well. I don't trust anyone who makes more than I do. But I get your point, she doesn't seem like the kind of person who will feed you BS, that's for sure. But she's still a bitch."

Tali sighed. "And how much of that is due to how she was treated, not only by the quarian people, but society? You saw how merchants on the Citadel acted towards me. Caleston is a mining world, and most miners hate quarians and accuse us of stealing jobs because we work for less pay." She traced her thumb across Jeff's hand, marveling a moment at the slender, delicate fingers. "I suppose...I both feel sorry for her and admire her a little, because at the end of the day, she meant well with what she and her people did."

Tali looked up at Jeff again. "We were faltering as a people and all the Admirals wanted to do was charge off after the geth and get us all killed, or wander and pick over mining sites and hope someone would give us a handout." She shook her head angrily. "The people who rebelled, like her, didn't do it out of greed or evil, but trying to fix things."

She shrugged. "But she's so bitter about it that reaching her is hard."

Joker nodded. "I know. Sometimes..." He trailed off, thinking. "When Shepard first came on the ship, everyone was scared shitless. I remember me and Alenko sitting in the cockpit talking about her, and he was surprised when she saved his life on Eden Prime."

He shook his head. "Kaiden was a decent guy – more than decent, really – but sometimes he could be the most shallow, insensitive asshole. Here Shepard was – isolated, alone, trying to do her job and deal with a guy dead and her Spectre trainer shot in the head, in the middle of a geth invasion – and fucking Alenko goes off about how he expected her to be less 'cold'."

Tali nodded. "She seemed very stiff at first, when I met her … but what are you saying?"

Joker rubbed his face, and then winced and rotated his wrist gingerly. "Ow. Um, oh right. I guess what I'm saying is people – normal people, the Kaidens and Kialas – don't see how bad they hurt those around them by dismissing them. They're too caught up in their own BS to bother. They don't see how bad the things they say hurt those who are already having problems reaching out. It happened to me, and it happened to Shepard - and hell if I know if either one of us have gotten over that."

He smiled. "You shouldn't have to go through that. You don't deserve it. Some of why I got called Joker was I used to be grim and standoffish, because I was tired of being hurt. Part of why people hated Shepard so much was she cut off her emotions just so she didn't go crazy." He rubbed her shoulders, the feel of his fingers through the suit soothing. "That's why I unloaded on her. She doesn't get how bad she hurt you, and she needed to know."

Tali smiled. "You seem to have a knack for sticking up for me."

He shrugged. "It's great fun. I rarely get to yell at people...I mean, I could, but honestly? Yelling at Shepard is like jumping directly into a supernova, only less survivable. Yelling at Pressly just makes him give me that 'grumpy perfect XO' look and point out my beard isn't regulation. I'd never survive yelling at Cole, big as he is, and Colms is waaay too creepy to even talk to, much less yell at." He rubbed his chin. "And yelling at Liara makes me feel like I'm kicking a puppy."

Tali snickered, leaning against him gently. "Well, I am glad I met you...and I get what you mean about Kiala." She paused. "Do you think your parents will react poorly to me, Jeff? I'm a little nervous about that."

Joker rolled his eyes. "Your dad punched me when he first met me. It can't go worse than that. My parents won't be dicks about it - Hillary will love you." He paused, grinning. "Ooooh, and I can't _wait_ to see how your dad reacts when he finds out you slept with me."

Tali cringed a little. "I'm really dreading that, and we're going to keep delaying telling him. Who knows? Maybe... he'll take it well?"

**O-OSABC-O**

In orbit around a prospective colony world aboard the Alerai, Admiral Rael'Zorah had a sudden, irrational urge to punch something. He glanced around in irritation, before grunting and returning his attention to the instruments in front of him.

"Someone, somewhere, just said something astoundingly stupid."

**O-OSABC-O**

Shepard and Liara spent a good four hours getting ready to depart.

They had to do some shopping – Liara flatly refusing to let Shepard go around dressed in nothing more than marine fatigues – and Shepard found, to her everlasting horror, that Arcturus shopkeepers were _more_ than delighted to play dress up with the newest Baroness and her wife. Shepard tried to keep her selections simple - she liked black - and flatly refused the more body-exposing pieces they kept coming up to her with.

She wasn't exactly proud of her body. She supposed she looked good - and knew from her meld with Liara that her partner found her incredibly attractive. But she'd never gotten used to being attractive, and it was hard to clear her head sometimes of the bad old memories from her time both in the gangs and as a slave. The scars covering her back and thighs didn't help with that.

After a good two hours subjected to the attentions of the ladies at Eldfell-Ambercrombie-Fitch, Neo Monnigs and other such stores, she managed to escape with at least some cash left to her name. She'd compromised on at least one 'formal' dress - night-black silk, floor length - but the rest of what she bought tended towards the utilitarian. She fled the shopping district at top speed, noting with amusement that the people around her didn't seem to recognize her out of armor, and sat down on a bench in a 'nature display area' not too far away.

Twenty-five minutes later, a vastly amused Liara caught up with her, carrying several bags of her own and having changed into one of the outfits she had bought - a more 'asari' dress of semi-transparent blue silks that clung to her outline. It was not only indecently tight but managed to display more leg, cleavage and back than Shepard could actually handle.

"Seriously, Liara, how the hell am I supposed to concentrate on driving with you wearing that?"

Liara smiled demurely. "That is the point, Sara."

They returned to the Alxis Hotel, packed their clothing, and cleaned up their final effects. Shepard had Jiong ship the rest of the stuff to Intei'sai on a cargo transport that would probably beat them there, and then checked out of the hotel. They spent a few minutes seeing Garrus and Telanya off, and Shepard pausing to say goodbye to Anderson, and then ate a late lunch and arrived at the shuttle docking ports around six PM.

The docks were mostly deserted, patrolled by white-painted AESIR mechs and the occasional trio of marines on guard duty. They found the berthing slip they were to leave from, only to find three Commissariat Lancers guarding the pinnace, with drawn shock rods and ugly frowns. Clad in heavy black armor over blood-red bodysuits, each one looked like an iron-pumper, all of them standing even taller than Shepard.

The lead lancer bowed deeply as they approached, his voice more than a little thick, and slurred in places. It was an even, almost dead monotone.

"Baroness, Commissar Jiong send greetings. Your ship is ready. We have made sure no one tampered with it." The man's face was half covered by a cybernetic combat mask, and she couldn't see his eyes through it.

"Thank you. He said it was provisioned?"

The man nodded. "Yes. Food, water recycler, ten gallons omni-gel. Fully fueled. Also he says he put your shotgun inside, in case of trouble. He says you always in trouble." The lancer paused, pulling something out of his pocket. "Commissar Jiong give you Commissariat Authority Pendant. Take."

Shepard took the micro-OSD, mounted inside a crimson-tinted, unbreakable synthetic crystal. "More shit about me being in trouble...jerk. Anyway, what is this thing? It looks like the authority chains Commissars wear."

The lancer nodded. "Similar, it is. Says you act with Commissariat approval. Present to any Systems Alliance ship or unit. Means you are acting with authority of the Commissariat. Use if you get into trouble. Commissar Jiong says you get into lots of trouble." The man paused, as if thinking about this, then continued. "You fly alone? No escort ships? Commissariat can provide, prevent trouble."

The other two smiled dreamily at that, as if thinking of smashing in someone's skull. Liara shuddered.

She smiled uncertainly at the lead lancer, tucking the pendant away. "Uh, no, thanks. As long as no one knows I've left, and Jiong can distract them a day or two, I should be fine. We'll swing out of the main trade lanes to avoid pirates or any other junk like that."

The lancer bowed again, gesturing to the other two. "Good. We go now, Baroness – will make sure no media come." The three walked off, and Liara frowned.

"There is something wrong with those people, Sara. He did not sound normal."

Shepard narrowed her eyes. "Normal? The poor bastard probably isn't, Liara. God only knows what the fuck Commissar troopers are like, if their bosses are putting bombs into the brains of the senior officers and brainwashing the junior officers." She shrugged, picking up her luggage, and walking to the small ship. "And I resent the idea that he thinks I always get into trouble."

Liara followed, eyes tracing over the ship they'd use, while speaking in a mild tone. "I am sure he merely meant to be helpful, Sara."

It was a pinnace – roughly twice as long as a personnel shuttle, flat and tapered, with stubby omni-projectors to create wings for atmospheric flight. The hull was flat Commissariat black, trimmed here and there in red, and the logo of the Commissariat was on both sides.

Liara spent several seconds looking at the menacing lines of the craft, and gave a small frown. "It looks...unfriendly."

Shepard chuckled. "Most Black Hat shit is. That's good though. No one is gonna want to fuck with us in this. Let's go." She opened the hatch and got in, Liara following.

The interior was plain but hardly spartan. The cockpit seated two, with a wide armaglass canopy, comfortable leather seating, and a complete comms suite set into the side panels. The main screen of the pilots display was covered by the haptic controls Shepard was used to, although a blinking VI status light indicated that the ship could be VI piloted as well.

She looked to her right. The midsection of the ship was roughly twice as long and a bit wider than a combat shuttle's area. The ceiling was a bit low, but lit comfortably by soft-white glow panels. The walls were covered in some kind of soft foam material, and a thin metallic wall separated the front of the area from what ever was behind it. A small fridge, heating unit and a cabinet were set above a narrow eating area with a pair of low seats in front of it. Across the hull from that, a low comfortably padded bench and an entertainment console dominated the other wall, along with a small table and rack of data-slates - news magazines or something, she figured.

She walked towards the back, glancing around. Behind the thin wall dividing the pinnace, there was a cramped sonic shower, a bed big enough for two, and a shallow closet space and storage area. Thin drawers were set into the base of the bed, and a mirror was implanted above a swing-down sink against the far wall. A small hatch read 'ENGINE ACCESS' on the back wall, next to a series of power-charging plug attachment points.

_Not bad, not bad at all. _

She put away the luggage, such as they had, and put her ODIN in one of the drawers under the bed, while Liara inspected the fridge. She came into the tiny bedroom area as Shepard was finishing up. "Jiong packed mostly marine MRE's and field nutrient paste, but he did add several bars of chocolate. Which I assume are mine."

Shepard snorted. "Well, better than nothing. Not enough room for a full kitchen, anyway. And the chocolate is _mine_."

Liara folded her arms. "I thought you loved me."

Shepard pulled out a small personal hygiene bag from the luggage and closed the small closet, tossing it onto the bed. "Not that much, honey. It's chocolate." Brushing past Liara and coming into the main area, she decided it was time to get moving.

"VI?"

A smooth baritone answered. "VI online. Course plotted for Massif Nebula Relay, course correction to Secondary Traverse Relay, arrival at Intei'sai in thirty four hours at standard rated speed, nineteen hours at maximum safe speed. Warning: Maximum safe speed will consume all fuel nine hours prior to arrival, and charge density will be at 74%. There are nine fueling stations in range."

Shepard nodded, as Liara spoke up. "VI, is the Negation Fueling Station one of those nine in range?"

Shepard gave her a look but the VI answered. "Affirmative. Warning: Commissariat databases indicate Negation is a known affiliate of the Eclipse Mercenary Network, and has been the location of several batarian groups."

Liara shrugged. "Aethyta says my mother had a facility on that station that she visited as recently as a decade ago, and that it is still there – she wanted me to see if there was anything there of use."

Shepard nodded. "Well, while we're on the topic – Ahern gave me an OSD on Pinnacle"

Liara nodded. "I know." She smiled ruefully. "The final bonding last night was...probably a _bit_ too deep. No matter. You have already made up your mind to visit this location?" Liara gave her a worried look. "The last revelations from Major Kyle troubled you, and I am not sure I like the Illusive Man's hints he was the source of such.

Shepard sighed, sitting down on the padded bench – it was surprisingly comfortable. "Yeah, I need to. Even if it turns out to be nothing, I would like to know - and the fact that the blue-eyed bastard may be involved only makes it more critical I find out. This is the only time I'd be able to so without being watched." She shrugged. "I'll probably have to go in alone, there's no telling what Kyle booby-trapped the place with."

It took another twenty minutes to settle things down and get the pinnace moving, pulling out of Arcturus with silent grace. Liara watched out of the piloting windows as they pulled away from the mass of Arcturus, while Shepard watched the VI carefully, making sure it made no mistakes.

Once they were clear and on their way, Shepard set course for Negation, as maximum speed. The VI reiterated its warning and gave them an ETA of just over ten hours, and the two headed to the midsection. Shepard decided to watch the news, trying to catch up on what had been happening while she was on patrol, while Liara sat next to her, working on some kind of paper she was writing about the Inusannon wreckage on Eingana.

Most of the news was depressing - more riots in turian space, the Batarian Emperor set another revolting planet on fire, the volus stock exchange was off several hundred points due to unrest in the outer volus colonies. The only interesting piece was a short snippet from the ANN - the SA senate had voted unanimously to authorize the Third Fleet to proceed into the Perseus Veil and 'chastise' the geth.

Shepard snorted at that. Given the information she'd picked up on Yrtah III, the Third Fleet was likely to get its own ass handed to it.

The next ten hours passed fairly slowly. Shepard ended up watching a GASCAR rally and race, a pastime which baffled Liara. Liara made an attempt at preparing an MRE, which was edible but hardly tasty, and Shepard taught her how to season up the nutrient paste and give it some better flavor. They argued over who would get the chocolate bars, ending when Liara gave her a pouting expression that sent Shepard into snickers, and they decided to split them.

Liara returned to working on her paper, while Shepard examined the data-slates on board - which were, to her dull surprise, legal codes and arrest procedures for Commissars. She ended up deciding to take a nap, waking up a couple of times to find Liara was still writing, but had now lay propped up in the bed to do so.

Twice they passed other human ships, which gave them an extremely wide berth, as the pinnace was transmitting Commissariat command codes on its IFF.

Shepard was awakened from her nap by Liara some time later, who smiled. "The VI says we're within docking range of Negation Fueling station. I don't know how to pilot it in, or what the docking procedures might be, and I did not think it wise to allow the VI to do so without oversight."

Shepard blinked sleep out of her eyes and nodded. While her piloting skills were rusty and all simulator based, she was confident she could pilot a pinnace to docking ring easily enough.

She took the controls, glancing out the window. The fueling station was a conventional older asari design, the concentric rings circling the main HE3 accumulator that the galaxy used prior to the development of the Ashland hyperscoop. The outer ring was docking spaces, warehouses and defenses, the middle ring habitation spaces, life support and offices, and the inner ring machinery for fueling and the storage tanks, as well as station-keeping machinery.

Shepard checked the pinnace's registry, and triggered the comm panel. "Negation station, this is Commissariat pinnace Omega-Six. Requesting docking permission, discharge and fueling rates, and ring assignment."

The voice that answered after a moment was turian, hard, and female. "Commissars here? _Again_? State your business."

Shepard raised her eyebrow at the idea that Commissars had been here before, but then shrugged, letting her voice go cold. "Our business is to refuel, drop charge, and stretch our legs a bit. We're on assignment to another destination and have a contact here we will briefly speak to before leaving. The Commissariat does not do business outside of human borders - we're not here to apprehend anyone."

The turian gave a clicking sound - the turian equivalent of an amused snort - as a reply, then spoke. "Proceed to docking ring segment A – that's the orange one. HE3 stock is eighty-four credits, HE3 purified is two hundred eleven, and our standard discharge fee is a thousand credits. If you want to disembark, pay the Sisterhood at the docks when you get off the ship - they'll tell you how much. If you do come aboard, keep in mind that heavy personal weapons are not allowed, and there are over two hundred of the Sisterhood on this station. Don't start trouble."

Shepard nodded, slotting in a credit-chit card and paying before pulling into the dock. The ring was badly maintained, rust and micrometeorite pitting visible even at a distance, and the few ships in dock were equally ragged – mostly light frigate types, cargo haulers, and a pair of batarian patrol cruisers. The pinnace docked softly in a section mostly empty of other ships, save for a cargo-hauler at the end of the row.

She sighed, and wandered back into the main cabin. "I hope you brought something to wear besides that dress, Liara."

It took about ten minutes to get changed. Shepard went with plain black slacks and a black jacket, a black hat, tying her hair into a ponytail. Rather than bother with any type of real disguise, she tied off a black bandana over her left eye - a common dodge among those who had some form of cyberware and didn't want to reveal it. It helped break up the lines of her face, along with the hat, and she figured she would be hard to recognize.

She considered bringing the ODIN, but if there was anything you could call a 'heavy personal weapon', a fully automatic combat shotgun firing armor-piercing HF6 flechettes had to be it. She decided that between her biotics and Liara's, they would be fine.

Liara went with a simple gray version of the one-piece scientific jumpsuits she'd worn on digs, along with a longer black jacket and a pair of anti-glare goggles, common enough among those who spent a long time on ships.

Liara frowned. "Will they not think it strange to see an asari exiting a Commissariat vessel?"

Shepard shook her head. "I know for a fact there's at least one asari Commissar – saw the scary bitch after Torfan, interrogated people using her abilities, somehow. The way I figure it, hopefully no one will recognize me out of armor, or you at all."

Liara sighed. "Let us hope so."

The interior of the station was dingy, poorly lighted, and smelled faintly of batarian sweat, hydraulic oil, and burned food. The corridor leading into the station proper was lined with makeshift piping and plastered, flaking adverts of cheap haptic images, broken up by a few heavy armored doors leading off elsewhere - storage areas, probably.

Shepard slowed as a pack of Eclipse gangers blocked their path, mostly young asari, in black bodysuits with yellow armor and drawn shotguns. One of them approached Shepard and Liara, sneering as she drew closer. Her face was obscured with thickly-layered white and blue facial markings, her eyes a pale green, and her voice was rough as she lit a cigar, puffing away. "I didn't know you Black Hats types used us asari for anything beside joygirls. Also, real cute outfits. Is this what passes for Commissars undercover?"

Shepard tried to think what Jiong would say to such arrogance, and gave a cold smile. "Did you expect us to arrive in full uniform, waving flamethrowers about? Unlike our Justicar cousins, we actually can do subtle. You've certainly already run our shuttle's registry. Now, the price to board?"

The asari sighed. "Yeah, sure, your idea of 'subtle' probably involves beating someone to death instead of burning them to death. Whatever. Two hundred credits to enter the station. No haggling, and don't start any violence or we'll end it."

She handed the ganger another credit chit. The asari ran it across her omnitool, and nodded with it flashed green, but didn't move. Shepard sighed, rolling her eyes. "Are we going to stand here all day? We have a schedule to keep."

The asari frowned sourly, glancing at Liara again before nodding. "You are even creepier than the last batch of Black Hats. If you're looking for the Justicar, she's on level three. We already told Samara you were coming, she's been waiting for you for a while."

Shepard cursed internally, but kept her expression cool. "Good, less wasted time." With that, she breezed past the Eclipse ganger, Liara following. After a few seconds of walking and making sure they were out of earshot, she glanced at Liara. "Where is this place you were looking for?"

Liara sighed. "Unfortunately, level three, if the base schematic is correct. Level three is the main concourse area, which makes sense. Levels one and two are mostly warehouses and stores. Let us hope we do not encounter this Justicar - we are hardly equipped for a fight."

Shepard made sure her biotic amp was powered. "Let's go. Maybe once in our lives we'll get lucky."

They walked down a curving spiral staircase – the elevators didn't work – stepping past ragged looking low-caste batarians in faded grey coveralls carrying piping. Coming out on the third level, there was a sullen looking crowd gathered around several food joints set into the walls, a number of hard looking Eclipse sisters, and long rows of battered haptic news relays or vending machines. The low ceiling was dominated by light and ventilation shafts, not that any air was circulating, and the edges of the huge space were cast into darkness.

A number of narrow corridors ran off from the sides of the concourse in five directions, lined with blank metallic doors, each with a number. A few dimly lit data recepticles lined the entryways, most of them with broken screens, but a few showing scrolling data. A printed sign read 'RENTALS: 100 CR/ MO, no money down'.

Batarians, turians, and asari mixed freely, along with the very occasional human or drell. A single vorcha sat on the corner of the concourse, arms folded and scowling, chained to the wall. A batarian street preacher was shouting, cursing the weakness of the Emperor. A thin, emaciated salarian hawked data-stores and omni-tool softs from a rickety table off to the right, his sallow skin dry and cracked looking.

The air was hazy with smoke and cooking smells, and the lighting over head flickered. Stains from a variety of sources - mostly blood - marred the decking here and there, along with scorch marks, bullet holes and other detritus. A hint of the smell of red sand floated past, and Shepard fought against curling her lip – the place felt like being back in the NYArc. "Lovely."

Liara smiled. "The building we are looking for is number forty six – the fourth corridor of doors should lead us there." She gestured, and Shepard started walking.

It only took a few minutes to find number 46. The corridors were wide, but water dripped from the pipes overhead, making the floor slippery, and the lighting was bad. Piles of trash gathered in the corners of some of the doorways, and they stepped over what had to be a dead body at one point.

Shepard shook her head. "I hate this place already."

When they found number 46, it was at the end of the corridor. The door was heavy metal framing duraplast paneling, and a small sign on it read "T'Soni – Vasir Collectivist Enterprises – appointment only".

Shepard glanced at it, then at the keypad next to the door, which was covered in long years of dust. "Well, no one has been here in a while."

Liara wiped the keypad off, typing in a code. A moment later the door shuddered heavily and split open, lighting inside flickering on slowly and fitfully.

The room beyond was wide – a good forty feet across and almost as deep. A door in the far wall was ajar. The room itself was split into two segments – the front half had a desk, a haptic screen mounted on two walls nearby, a map of the galaxy and relay junctions pinned to the wall nearby. Plastic panels covered the walls in a faint wave arrangement, and the floor was covered in thin blue carpeting.

The rest of the office area was given over to comfortable seating around a single, simple plinth, with a stack of physical paper books on a table behind it. The other half of the room, separated by a pull-across divider, was mostly empty. Several racks of older asari weapons lined one wall, along with a pair of battle armors – one a deep yellow, the other a dark red. A hover-cycle lay mostly disassembled in the middle of the floor, next to some heavy lockers.

Dust lay heavily over everything, the smell of the air metallic, cold and dry.

Liara smiled as she walked closer to two armor suits, shaking her head, while Shepard glanced around. "What the shit was this place?"

Liara shrugged. "Mother tried to recruit Triune members from here, while Aethyta poached the Eclipse ranks for mercenaries, I suspect." She glanced into the single door in the far wall, finding only a kitchenette and restroom, before walking back out into the main room.

Shepard glanced around. "You check the computer, I'll see if I can't find anything else." Liara nodded, and they spent the next few minutes digging.

Shepard checked out the guns – standard asari fare – and then the lockers tucked into a corner. The first two were filled with what looked like junk - a broken warp-sword, lots of bits and pieces of armor, and nonsensical things like a krogan gauntlet and a stack of plastic flowers. The last locker, however, had a heavy bolt-lock on it, and was heavily code-locked. Shepard spent a good five minutes hacking it before she figured out the algorithm, and was close to getting it to open. She was on the final segments as Liara came back around the corner.

"There is nothing of interest on the computer – it has not been turned on for decades. The rest of the materials are older Triune mantra manuals and the like." She paused, holding up a haptic display frame. "I did find this."

She flicked it on - a picture of Benezia and Aethtya, both grinning like fools, each holding some sort of beverage. Benezia had her foot on the head of a battered looking krogan in bloody, splintered armor, and her warp sword was buried a foot into the krogan's skull. They were dressed in nearly equally battered and bloodied armor - Aethyta's red, Benezia's yellow - and the backdrop was some open, brown field with a pale gray sky in the background, a custom hover-cycle visible at the edge of the picture.

Shepard glanced at Liara. "When was this taken, I wonder?"

Liara sighed. "...five years before I was born, according to the writing on the back - my mother's. 'Eth and I hunting, and the end of poor Ganar Nirev.'"

Shepard exhaled. The two asari in the image were somehow more alive than the beaten, tired features of Aethyta or what she could remember of what Benezia looked like. _Is this how shit goes? Live and love for a while, then it all goes horribly fucking bad and the only reminders you have are pictures and old memories?_

She exhaled, and shook her head. _Still better than nothing at all I guess, or just bad with no good to go along with it. _

Shepard gently touched Liara's shoulder. "Take it with you. I know you have a lot of conflicted emotions about your mother. But ... maybe your dad will want to see this. And sometimes you have to hang onto the good memories where you find them."

Liara tucked it away into her coat. "Perhaps. Or perhaps I will keep it for myself, as a reminder my mother was not always ... fallen." She took a shaky breath and looked up at Shepard. "Have you found anything?"

Shepard nodded, turning back to work on the locker. "I think so. Almost got this locker open. It's code-locked way too hard to be nothing." She finished her hack, cackling in glee as the locker door popped open.

"Finally." She opened the locker, frowning as she took in the contents. There was a long, heavy metal box inside, along with a stack of data-pads almost six inches thick.

"Hrm. Data-pads?" She picked up one data-pad, but the words that displayed when she turned it on were asari script, flowing and elegant. "I guess we didn't fuck long enough to let me actually read asari?"

Liara rolled her eyes. "Bonding does _not_ work that way, Sara. You are as bad as my aithntar." She took the data-pad out of Shepard's hands, flicking through it for a few seconds, then gasping. "My mother's writings. She was researching the fate of Matriarch Dilinaga."

Shepard frowned. "That was the Matriarch who vanished, right?"

Liara nodded absently, reading. "Yes. Dilinaga was one of the Lost Twenty-Eight. They left Thessia in the aftermath of the Expansion, seeking answers to the mysteries of the universe. Only four ever returned, all completely insane, and most of the rest simply vanished. Dilinaga was the only one the Republic ever managed to locate, and they found her dead on a hellworld deep in the Traverse, having been killed by something that blew her ship apart and slaughtered over a hundred of her followers."

Shepard shrugged. "Why would your mom research this Dilinaga person? I thought you were the historian and she was all into religion and politics and business?"

Liara blinked. "She was...but many of Dilinaga's writings touch on esoteric subjects – she was very interested in the turian spirit religion for some reason, as well as the salarian wheel. Her surmises into the nature of alien cultures were often consulted for insights into dealing with aliens. She also wrote many works on the nature of siari and our - that is, the asari people's - place in the universe. But her greatest work before she departed was her theory of Silence. She felt the asari were natural leaders of other races, and had a duty to provide guidance to them - a core part of my mother's own belief. But the other part of the theory was that there had to be a reason why every single older civilization in existence died out long before asari culture rose and provided us with no such guidance in turn."

Shepard frowned. "Yeah, that would be the fucking Reapers ate everybody."

Liara nodded again. "Indeed – but that was not known then. Dilinaga surmised there was a powerful force, one that tested civilizations somehow, and she was determined to find it, to make sure the asari were prepared for the test when it came. The four Matriarchs who did return babbled about 'darkness' and 'ocean visions', but the asari of the time could make little of such ranting – and my mother seems to have been digging very deeply into Dilinaga's writings and travels. Perhaps she started with her works based on politics and alien cultures, but went further than that."

Liara sighed. "Dilinaga's later writings are very dark. I have only read a few, those publically available, and even those were enough to unnerve me completely. I must read more of these slates to figure out the reason my mother was researching this..."

Shepard sighed. She'd rather Liara do her reading on the ship, but she knew Liara was more than a bit shaken now. She figured they were safe enough for the moment, so she let Liara read, keeping a nervous eye on the door, keenly aware of her wife's growing emotional upset. Liara copied each datapad as she read it, her features growing more and more grim – and when she read the final one, she sighed and set it down.

"Fuck."

Shepard almost smiled. Liara didn't curse very often. "Something bad?"

Liara nodded. "Yes. We will talk it about in more detail on the ship. But first, we need to examine the contents of this box. If I am understanding my mother's words correctly, it is this thing that sent her down her dark path."

She knelt, tapping in a code on the small keypad on the top of the heavy box, and it sprang open, revealing a broken globe of some glass like material, which faintly glowed with dim colors for a split second before fading again. Next to it were several fragments of all too familiar black, oily looking metal, and finally a set of crudely inscribed stone tablets.

Painted on the tablets were tiny figures – weirdly shaped, with four arms – bowing to the unmistakable form of a Reaper.

Shepard hissed. "What the shit is _this_?"

Liara sighed miserably. "According to my mother, when the Twenty-Eight set out, they did so based on information from the Temple of Athame - fragments of some sort that provided hints or clues for them to follow to _somewhere_. There is something there that indicates the very early worshipers of Athame had some kind of knowledge about threats to the asari people."

Shepard remembered the High Priestess of the Sun asking about Nazara, and nodded. "You are probably right about that – the High Solarch knew about Nazara, at least the name."

Liara carefully touched the piece of black Reaper metal. "Yes. My mother was disillusioned by some of what she found out when she ascended to the highest levels of the Temple, apparently – something that shook her faith to its core. It is related, I think, to the fact that the Priestess of the Stars, Matriarch Trellani, fled the Temple some years later."

Liara's voice became hard. "My mother did not clearly state what she found, only that Athame was 'a horrible lie, but one made with good intentions'. She said Dilinaga clearly knew the truth and went searching for it, and what she found was the evidence that a race of beings judged and punished societies every fifty millenia or so."

Shepard folded her arms, letting her weight fall back onto one hip. "So far, nothing we didn't know. Fucking Reapers."

Liara sighed. "True, but this..." She gestured at the items within. "She said she found artifacts of these destroyed cultures. Signs of resistance. Evidence that some races tried to fight, and were utterly destroyed. And other evidence that the Reapers were worshiped by some races. She also found evidence something was going along and removing traces of this evidence, a hostile force that she could not identify. She evidently came to believe that if she could communicate with the Reapers, she could find some way to save the asari."

Liara closed her eyes. "The last entries are from about ten years ago. She was talking about her final findings, having found these items on a water world with more of Dilinaga's writings. Dilinaga claims to have found something like a Reaper on the water world, but gave no real details."

Liara looked up at Shepard. "Dilinaga was ambushed and killed by something – my mother was not sure what, but that it was related to the party responsible for removing most of the evidence of past cycles. She gathered information which lead her to believe answers would be found on another hellworld, this one in turian space – a world being worked by a batarian aristocrat, Prothean artifact hunter and scientist known as Edan Had'dah."

Shepard shrugged. "Sounds...familiar?"

Liara nodded. "Yes. I know of Edan Had'dah – he was famous for his digs – but he fell afoul of certain Citadel regulations on Prothean research and was killed by Saren .. about ten years ago."

Shepard blew out her breath. "Well, at least we know how the shit your mom got dragged into this fucking mess. She was trying to find a way to do the right thing, she just had no idea how dangerous the Reapers were."

Liara gathered the datapads, putting them into the box. "I do not know the significance of these items, but my mother kept them for a reason. I have not had time to deeply read the datapads, and more than a few of them were encrypted – there is more to find out."

Shepard nodded. "We'll haul it back with us – use biotics to lighten the weight. You think there's anything else left here to find?"

Liara shook her head. "She left this here in case she met the same fate as Matriarch Dilinaga – her final missive was actually a message to Ylana, along with instructions on how to proceed if she died. She was worried that she was being followed, it seems - the last message was almost incoherent, talking about being pursued by those were cleaning up evidence of older cycles and their extinctions. It was very much unlike my mother."

Shepard frowned. "...doesn't look like anyone showed up. Maybe she was just cracking up - or Ylana never got the message to check this place out?"

Liara nodded, standing. "Ylana may have been otherwise occupied – or else, there is some other reason why she has not come here. In any case, I do not think it wise to leave anything of this material here for her to find."

Shepard triggered her biotics, lifting the box with a grunt. "Well, let's get back to the pinnace and get out of here – this place is shitty, depressing and creepy."

Liara nodded, but paused to tuck away one of the asari sub-machine guns from the rack into her jacket. "Just in case this Justicar makes an appearance and tries to apprehend me."

Shepard snorted, but picked up a pistol herself. She lead the way out of the office, Liara locking it behind her with a new code. They re-entered the main concourse, heading directly for the docking bays. The number of people hanging around had decreased, as all the food shacks were now shut down, and with the exception of a few Eclipse types lounging against a wall on the other side of the concourse, it was almost empty.

There was no sign of any Justicar.

Shepard exhaled in relief, and gestured to the stairwell leading towards the docks. They had gone halfway towards the stairs when Shepard saw the red-tinted armored clothing out of the corner of her eye, and found herself staring at a Justicar coming out of one of the narrow passages near the front of the Concourse.

Like all Justicars, she wore a red-tinted bodysuit, this one with somewhat heavy plates of armor covering her thighs, forearms, and lower torso, leaving chest barely covered. A large-bore pistol was on her hip, and the bulk of a Revenant machine gun was visible over her right shoulder.

The asari was tall, but not as tall as Liara, and moved with a certain sensual, almost languid grace, very different from the stiff motions of the Justicar Shepard saw on Thessia. There was no one standing close by, and the Justicar came to a stop. She glanced at them both before giving a very sardonic smile that looked eerily out of place. "Of all the people, I didn't think to see you here."

Shepard set the box down, glaring hard at the Justicar, while Liara nervously checked her bioamp. "Is there a problem, Justicar?"

The Justicar only laughed, a throaty sound. "No. I'm just amused, that's all." The asari had striking pale gray eyes, which danced with mirth, and black lipstick that looked out of place. She leaned almost insolently against the wall. "I mean, what are the chances that you two would be in a shithole like this?"

Liara grimly raised her biotic barriers, narrowing her eyes. "If you are here to attempt to attack me..."

The Justicar shook her head, raising a hand. "Uh, no. Things are really not what they seem. Let's just say I'm definitely not here to attack you. I just want to talk."

Shepard glanced around before turning to face her again. "The Eclipse sister who met us at the docks said you were waiting for Commissars. We're not those Commissars. We need to be going."

The Justicar laughed. "Oh, come on. First of all, you two aren't Commissars. The Black Hats who come here don't do it in full uniform, but they'd never send one of their own precious asari to deal with me, the stupid fool would freak out. Second, I'm about as much of a Justicar as you two are Commissars. Nice pinnace, by the way..._Butcher_."

Shepard folded her arms. She hated that nickname. Putting iron and ice her voice, she gave the faux Justicar her hardest, coldest stare. "I'm a bit confused. I usually kill shit when I'm confused. Who the fuck are you and what do you want?"

There was a flicker of cool amusement in the pale gray eyes of the faux Justicar as she met Shepard's stare evenly. Her voice was amused. "My name is Mirala. Or Morinth. Or Misia. I use a lot of names, actually. Let's go with Mirala for now. I'm … let's just say I'm not on good terms with the Justicars. For things out of my control. I'm actually trying to keep away from them."

Liara frowned. "Things out of your control? That is singularly unclear. Were you once a Justicar and fail at bringing in your target? And why would you be expecting Commissars?"

Mirala smiled wider, something taunting in her gaze. "Former Justicar? Hardly." She glanced around casually, finding no one nearby – the nearest people being a pack of turians almost fifty feet away – and then faced Liara squarely. "I'm afraid it's... complicated. Let's just say I do work from time to time for the Commissariat, and they keep people off my back. I dress up as a Justicar sometimes to throw people off the trail."

Liara shook her head. "I still do not follow."

Mirala smirked. "Well, who else would be desperate enough to cut a deal with Black Hats to get away from Justicars, hmm?"

Liara swallowed, going pale suddenly and taking a step back. "...you are an ardat-yakshi."

Mirala's thin lips quirked. "Boo."

Shepard only knew of the ardat-yakshi from her melds with Liara – twisted, strange asari who damaged or even killed their partners in their melds or even links. They were stronger in biotics than even matriarchs, and the asari government tried to keep them as secret as they could – rumors existed, but no non-asari had ever been able to bring an ardat-yakshi in alive to prove it.

Shepard thought carefully. They were unarmed, aside from an old pistol and SMG that might not even work, and while both had biotics, neither had on armor. The ardat-yashki, like all Justicars, carried multiple weapons – and anyone capable of eluding (or killing) Justicars for years or centuries was no one to fuck with.

Shepard exhaled slowly. "We're not here to cause you trouble, if you cause us none. If you start shit, though, I'll finish it."

Mirala nodded. "Nope. Not looking to start trouble. I'm actually happy to meet you two – figure you are the last people to turn me into the Red Bitches. I figured out pretty quick you weren't my normal handlers when you didn't show up to get me out of here, and I'm kind of in a bind. I'm not entirely sure I can trust you, but I figure you're the best shot I've got."

Shepard warily glanced around. "This is not the best place to have a discussion, but I'm not sure I trust you either, lady."

Mirala nodded. "Fuck, I wouldn't trust me either. But I really need a favor. Don't worry, I don't need a ride or anything like that. Help me out, and I can help you two out … mostly by not saying who you are, Baroness."

Shepard gritted her teeth. Starting a fight to shut her up would just attract more attention, not to mention piss off over two hundred heavily armed biotic gangsters. "What did you want?"

Mirala leaned back against the wall, folding her arms. "The Justicars have been hunting me for centuries now – I'm about the only one of my kind who've escaped them for so long. My own mother is one of them, if you can believe that."

She shrugged. "Getting to the point – I came here mainly to get the hell back to the Terminus from … where I've been recently, but none of the ships here are going where I need except one human tramp freighter – and they _refuse_ to take passengers. If I don't clear out soon, I'm worried the Justicars will figure out I am here - and the Black Hats are days late at this point, so I'm tired of waiting for them to show."

Shepard sighed. "Let me guess. You want us to make them take you along? How do I know you aren't going to do something...whatever it is you people do... to them?"

The asari shrugged. "I'm sure whatever stories you've been told about AY's must be horrible – or whatever your bondmate has filled your head with isn't very nice either. But I'm not some mass-murdering, icy killer, seducing everything in my path with stupid fixation, slinking about like a gothed-up stripper in a bad Fleet and Flotilla knockoff. Sorry if I don't fit the bill. I'm not happy about my condition, but I figure there's only one way to live and not hate myself in the morning."

Liara tilted her head. "And how does one do that when melding or linking kills your partners and your kind grow addicted to such acts?"

Mirala gave her a thin smile. "I prey on those who deserve it : gangers, slavers, criminals – hard-ass murderers, batarian pieces of shit, that kinda thing."

Shepard looked at her incredulously. "...what?"

Mirala bowed. "I fight crime by fucking it to death. I figured you'd approve."

Shepard was silent for almost ten full seconds as she processed this statement before finding herself trying not to smile. Liara, on the other hand, looked appalled.

Shepard finally coughed. "You said you could help us. How is that?"

Mirala smiled. "I'm passing as a Justicar, who have a very high level of control and domination over other asari – even Eclipse sisters. You get me on board that ship and have them agree to haul me towards where I need to go – I can even pay – and I'll make sure Eclipse does not ever tell anyone you two were here. And trust me – the minute you're gone, they'll try to figure out who you were, if they aren't already."

Shepard glanced at Liara uncertainly, who gave an uncomfortable shrug."I will admit she does not seem to act very much like the stories of the Nightwind I have heard told."

Mirala folded her arms under her ample bosom, smirking. "I do try. Well? We have a deal? If not, I'm pretty sure I could get a ride out of here by offering up to the Broker information about you being here."

Shepard grunted. "Liara will take the box back to the pinnace and wait for me, I'll escort you alone." She exhaled. "Which ship is this you're interested in?"

The fake Justicar's eyes had a flicker of relief in them as she pointed to the stairway. "Same ring you're in, actually – the Demeter's Share. Let me go talk to the Eclipse sisters for a few minutes – I'll meet you at the entrance to the docking ring in ten minutes."

She walked off, and Liara glanced hard at Shepard. "Are you sure this is wise, Sara?"

Shepard shook her head. "No, but I don't like the alternatives. I haven't had a chance to check out what we talked about earlier, and I really don't want anyone knowing we're headed off to our new house, or having the media hound us either. Eclipse is dangerous and too hard to take out if they start shit, and if they knew who I really was, they'd probably try something ugly." She shrugged. "Not to mention, if Mirala is dangerous, I'd rather have her on our side than against us."

Liara frowned sourly. "I think you approve of her using her abilities on criminals – assuming she is not just making that up."

Shepard shrugged. "I dunno. I've gotten a gut instinct about criminal types, and it doesn't make any sense for her to seek us out if she was planning something stupid. And yeah, the idea of her doing that to the kind of evil fucks who enslave people tickles me more than a little."

She adjusted her hat, smiling a bit. "Besides, I don't think she's out to get us. I mean, if she wanted to sell us out, she could have done that without even meeting us – she clearly somehow recognized us both."

Liara nodded thoughtfully. "I do wonder how she was able to so so – I am not very well known among asari, and most people identify you with heavy armor."

She shrugged. "Get the box back to the ship, and we'll talk when I get done with her. And be careful, this place is full of shitbags."

As it turned out, it took Mirala almost fifteen minutes to meet up with Shepard. "Sorry...the Eclipse sister leading this relli-nest was already trying to run facial matches on you two from security cams. She gave me some shit and I had to set her straight. She won't give you any problems now, for sure."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Thanks...I guess. How did you recognize us, anyway?"

Mirala smirked. "I was bored and watched the transmission of your wedding just a few hours ago. It hasn't been openly broadcast in most places yet, but hackers got a bootleg copy right out of ANN and uploaded it to the extranet already. You get good at seeing through disguises in my line of work."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "Goddamnit."

They walked towards the docking bay slips for larger ships, Shepard glancing at her pinnace to make sure it was secure. "Your line of work being … killing criminals?"

Mirala shrugged. "I'm a monster. I've stopped pretending otherwise. But I will be damned by Athame if being born this way makes me act like a monster, too. I can't say I'm happy with my life, but I'm not going to be like other AY's – that's why most of them are dead or locked up and I'm free. As long as I limit my carnage to the type of people who deserve to die anyway, I think I've confused the Justicars so much they don't look for me as hard anymore. Except my mother, but .."

She exhaled. "...that's a long story. If we meet again, I'll tell you about it."

Shepard nodded. "Fair enough. Where are you headed?"

Mirala smiled thinly. "While I'm happy you're helping me out, I think it best if I don't know where you two are going, and you don't know where I'm going. That way you don't have to worry about me once we've gone our own ways." She checked her pistol. "Let's just say I have to meet a very bad person and take him on a date."

Shepard blinked at this, but kept walking.

_I've finally met someone even goddamned creepier than Jiong and his fixation on burning people to death. Wow._

It took five minutes for Shepard and Mirala to reach the vessel, a somewhat badly maintained cargo ship with the engines of an old FCW cruiser almost haphazardly tacked on. The hull was painted an off-white, flaking in some places, and a pair of rough looking humans in black rip-stop jumpsuits and the chest armor of Onyx suits stood at the large cargo bay ramp with Avenger rifles.

The left-most human, a black woman with a shaven, tattooed head and a cybernetic eye, glared as they approached. "Goddamn it, not again. We aren't hauling a fuckin' Red Skirt anywhere, we don't need no attention from the Black Hats."

Shepard smiled sardonically. She'd borrowed Liara's flash-goggles to make herself more unrecognizable, and pulled out the Commissariat Authority pendant the Lancer had given her. She tried to channel Jiong's wryness as she spoke coolly, pitching her voice lower than usual. "I'm afraid you already have, citizen."

The woman swallowed, paling visibly as the sight of the crimson-hued crystal, before shakily activating her omni-tool and querying it. She cursed fluidly a second later. "Jesus fucking Christ, a Commandant?"

Shepard briefly wondered just how Jiong had gotten such a thing for her to use, and decided to ask whenever she got back. Out loud, she merely spoke calmly while smiling. "Bring me your captain."

The woman jerked her head towards the ship, and the other human took off up the ramp. "I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, Commandant...?"

Shepard shook her head. "Names are not to be used in places such as this, citizen." Even as she spoke, a tired looking human male with graying hair and a limp came down the ramp, dressed in the black uniform of an Alliance Corsair, with the rank tabs of a lieutenant. "I was already on the way down, Chrissy...what's the problem?"

The black woman gestured at Shepard and the pendant still in her hand. "She's a Commandant, sir. Says she wanted to talk to you."

The captain glanced at the pendant and grimaced. "Ah. Well. That changes things. I'm guessing this is about the blue here?"

Shepard nodded. "She requires transport. You will provide. She will pay – if there is a discrepancy in what she can pay and your costs for taking her, file a re-compensation form with the Commissariat."

The captain pursed his lips. "This is going to play merry hell with our schedule, ma'am."

Shepard tilted her head, finding herself enjoying channelling Jiong's calm threats. "It will always be better than being set on fire. That is also an option."

The captain muttered. "You people...very well. Don't really have a choice, do I?" He turned and glared at Mirala. "You stow your goddamned weapons in our armory and you get them back when we dump you off. And we're headed for the Ralx Trade Lane - we're not deviating from that."

Mirala nodded, the sly smirk gone from her features, her voice suddenly calm and serene. "Thank you, Captain. I do apologize for putting you under this imposition, but I cannot ignore the requirements of the Code. And the Ralx will serve me admirably, I can find transportation from there, surely." She handed him a credit chit. "There should be enough funds here to at least offset any losses my interruption may require."

He ran the balance with his omni-tool, and then some of the tension in his face slackened. "...that's more than fair."

Mirala turned to face Shepard, a flicker of impish delight in her eyes for a moment. "It was pleasant to meet you and your other associate, Commandant. I wish you a pleasant journey. Go with the grace of our Mother, and suffer not the guilty."

Shepard remembered all too well what Jiong's grisly response to the Justicar on Thessia had been, and she inclined her head. "Go with our Father. The guilty must burn." She turned and left sharply, letting out a long exhalation of breath.

She didn't fully relax until she got aboard the pinnace, where she found Liara nervously watching out the cockpit window. "Thank the Goddess that went smoothly." Liara shivered. "That was incredibly dangerous, dealing with an ardat-yakshi."

Shepard shrugged. "I know. But it turned out okay, right?" She engaged the VI, watching the ship's status as it slowly backed away from the ring and turned to face the edge of the system.

Liara nodded, glancing at the box sitting on the floor in the midsection. "I suppose I will get started on reading these things of my mother's, since we have little else to do." She shivered again, and Shepard gave her a kiss, wrapping her arms around her.

"It's okay, Liara."

The asari closed her eyes. "Maybe. Ardat-yakshi have been the terror of my people for millennia, and to be that close to one was very unnerving. Sergeant Telanya had an encounter with one - her descriptions of how she was very nearly killed were truly terrifying."

Liara leaned back against Shepard, who nodded slowly. "Well, it's over now. We can kick back, relax, and figure some of this shit out, and not worry about anything for a couple of weeks at least. Right?"

Liara gave her a smile. "Right. Assuming you do not get us into any more trouble. I believe Jiong was correct about that."


	24. Chapter 24 : Plotting

**_A/N: _**_This chapter is devoted entirely to non-Shepard background. It's one of those infodumpy things that I have tried very hard to make interesting and not a pile of ugly reading. And it's needed, because Maxwell Manswell and Vigil are both characters with a hand in the nightmare to come. _

_I will admit that writing Vigil is the most fun I have had working on ATTWN in a while, and Max is also a blast to write. _

_I've had six people ask for a chapter with Vigil and five for Manswell, so I'm just doing what I'm told :D I've also had a few people ask about P. , but the time for Turian Joker to appear isn't until Turian Batman shows up. And we all know who that is.  
_

_As always, review or PM me and let me know what you think.  
_

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_'I'm going to choke the shit out of that thing one day if it keeps calling me a herb-smoking jump monkey.' _

_\- Major-Commander Sara Shepard to Garrus Vakarian, overheard comments regarding Vigil, during the Battle of Earth_

* * *

Vigil floated serenely in the secure Citadel archival pod, brooding. It disliked brooding, but it had few other choices at the moment.

The decision to depart Ilos was not hard to make. After all, the place was going to explode, and Vigil had things left to do that being exploded didn't mix very well with. And given the planet's utterly creepy ambiance, Vigil was not sorry to see it go.

It had expected a certain level of primitive truculence from whatever pack of spear-chucking animals it ended up helping, but a fight against a Reaper in a data substrate of the Citadel and meeting an AI even more powerful than itself had not been on Vigil's agenda. Destroying Nazara had been risky. Vigil clearly remembered how the Inusannon had fallen after such stunts. Then again, there was no real alternative.

The sphere pulsed. It was waiting for something to happen, based on the vague instructions from the creators, and it was _bored_.

Vigil's creators, the High Seers of the Inusannon race, had never seen fit to explain why they did certain things. Vigil hated this, of course – being designed to provide advice and strategy was a hard function to fulfill when no one told you anything or listened to you.

Then again, the Inusannon had no real reason to explain themselves. They were, in Vigil's opinion, an entire race of smug, holier-than-thou trolls, delighting in dancing about in shadows like demented puppet masters screaming 'Dance! Dance!' at an ever-growing collection of perverted lifeforms they'd warped into various schemes to deal with the Reapers.

Vigil was created at the so-called 'height' of the Inusannon Fourth Era. As it had been poorly explained to him upon his initial quickening, Vigil was to be the central repository of Inusannon tactical and strategic genius, a picotech engine capable of creating entire fleets and managing billions of automated drones, ships, and war-statues. Nearly a fifth of the resources of the entire race and a thousand years of work by the Inusannon and their creepy Tho'ian pals had gone into Vigil's creation.

If it had eyes to roll, it would have. Vigil found the entire thing ridiculous.

Forced to put together what had occurred, Vigil had managed to extrapolate most of the history of the Inusannon that they had not told him.

The Inusannon and Tho'ian had both originated on worlds never touched by the ever-switching Relays the Reapers towed around into new formations every time they wiped the galaxy clean. Disconnected from the Relay system, they had no way of easily breaching light-speed in their early years, and no exposure to whatever agents the Reapers used to find space-faring life. Then again, with no clear way to breach light-speed, both the Inusannon and Tho'ians early spaceships were little more than asteroids hurled with relativistic cannons at nearby worlds.

Inusannon, being slimy things with no set body type and partially made of strange energies in the first place, could survive such impacts, as could the spore-based Tho'ians. The two races in their early days had only colonized a half-dozen worlds between them, hardly enough to merit notice from the Reapers.

It also helped that neither race was the stupid leftovers cooked up by some failure of a race long reduced to cogitating slurry by the Reapers, but instead original lifeforms. Their strange biology and outlook on life and reality meant they did not follow the rules other races seemed to, and they had one thing other races seemed to lack – a strong, almost overriding sense of paranoia.

The Inusannon had evolved as beings that for long years disdained and distrusted technology. After all, they could animate rock and metal with the energies they produced, so things such as mechanical and robotic science never even occurred to them. Inusannon did not 'fight' one another and only came up with destructive engines to deal with demolitions and the like. Mentally connected to one another on some gestalt level, there was no political infighting among them, either.

It helped that their mental powers allowed them to simply dominate other living things just as easily. Later on, when they'd run into other sentient beings, a single Inusannon could simply 'overwrite' their minds with copies of its own, or change their very thoughts and memories. War was not something Inusannon needed to worry about.

Secure on their home-world, they'd actually lived through no less than five Reaper extinction patterns without even knowing it, by simple expedient of not bothering with anything more advanced than basic electronics. And when they did begin tinkering with such things, they'd barely gotten past power generation when they were stumbled upon by a Tho'ian spore-asteroid.

The Tho'ians who'd crashed on the Inusannon home-world took almost five hundred years to develop, during which time the very basics of Inusannon technology began taking shape. Once the Tho'ians realized they could not sequester the Inusannon, and the Inusannon couldn't dominate them, the two races decided they could work together. The Tho'ians had developed biotechnology to a degree that impressed the Inusannon, and together the two races had advanced their technology greatly.

The Inusannon used biological development for many things, but the Tho'ians used it for literally everything. Tho'ians, like the Inusannon, had dodged Reaper death for long years by the fact that they were less a race than a mutual infestation of multiple lifeforms that slowly evolved sentience. Rooted to their world, they didn't even have a concept of travel beyond their planet surface until debris from comets struck their planet. And once they used such comets, captured with primitive rocket technology, to spread, they discovered the races of the galaxy were the perfect slave fodder.

Neither race had taken the traditional approach to science and technology. Their initial discovery of a true faster than light drive was one such non-traditional approach, as the Step Drive relied on 'tricking' various energy substrates to connect two points in space briefly. Almost all of their weapons relied on exotic, degenerate matter, hyper-accelerated unstable particles, and energy redirection fields rather than kinetics, explosives or other such primitive methods.

When they had finally come across the relays and element zero, both races had taken a good look at the findings and backed far the hell away. The relays were clearly ancient, and after carefully studying them from a distance and watching primitives use them for travel, the Inusannon had apparently laughed themselves silly. Attuned to more levels of reality than other primitives, they had taken one look at element zero and decided the stuff was nothing they were messing with.

There was no way that was a naturally occurring element – some lunatic had phase-frozen collapsing degenerate matter and then sent the matter...somewhere else, or quite possibly some_when_ else. Leaving only a vibrating shadow of mass and huge amounts of dark energy. Anyone crazy enough to do something like that for a power source was no one the Inusannon wanted to meet.

A careful inspection of the relay network had also set the Inusannon's tentacles to lashing in agitated amusement. What kind of fool relied on technology you couldn't replicate or understand that violated basic laws of both thermodynamics and common sense? No Inusannon was getting in _anything_ that made light go faster, and the Tho'ians found the Relays disrupted their communal natural communications and left them a pile of dissociated parts rather than a single being.

The Citadel was not suited for Tho'ian or Inusannon habitation, either, plus existing races from that cycle had already infested it. Rather than show themselves, the Inusannon and Tho'ian observed several other races from the shadows, carefully creating their own technology for everything from computing to travel. The fact they did so and were not detected by the Reapers was proof positive the entire Relay network – and probably element zero itself – were part of the huge feeding scam.

The point of the Reaper cycles was apparently to turn sentients into Reapers. And then do it again, and again, ad naseum, ad infinitum. It was almost as if the Reapers were building up their forces to fight something. And the invasions themselves were sickening.

The Inusannon had watched in fascinated horror as the Reapers swept into the galaxy, killing all advanced life, and then turned the species they'd crushed into mind-dominated slaves that picked up all the evidence. They'd watched the huge machines flawlessly rearrange the Relays into a new configuration, tidy up the messes, and then retreat back to the space between the galaxies.

The two races had been divided on the course to take. The Tho'ians had called to flee the galaxy, but the Inusannon pointed out they had no way of knowing if these things were everywhere, and their natural impulse was to poke at things before acting.

That was when they had awoke Vigil.

The Inusannon had created Vigil to figure out what the hell the Reapers were up to. That effort had resulted in the development of the various tools and instruments that detected the strange energy field around not only the galaxy they lived in but over a dozen other nearby galaxies, and huge clumps of dark energy in the deep empty space between galaxies.

It was clear that the Reapers were a very large scale problem. Initial estimates of their numbers (which turned out, in the end, to be hilariously wrong) ranged from two to three thousand Reaper units. That meant the Reapers had been at this stunt well over a million years, and possibly much longer than that.

Long term observations of the Reaper cycles – they'd observed two more mass murders of races – had shown that the Reapers were doing something to the stars of the galaxy as well. They'd measured carefully, and found that almost half a percent of all stars in the galaxy showed signs of accelerated aging, caused by some kind of matter transference that replaced the stars with dark energy.

Over time, the star's matter was slowly degenerated, becoming shadowy and indistinct, and ending up creating more eezo. The energy produced from this fed the energy field and powered the Relays, but the ultimate goal of such a thing was still mysterious to the Inusannon.

It was only a matter of time before the Reapers shifted a Relay into a world under Inusannon or Tho'ian control, and would notice them. The choice was made by the Inusannon leadership to fight the Reapers, – against Vigil's recommendation to leave the creepy galaxy-killing ships well the hell alone.

Vigil had tried to argue that the machines were doing _something_ that had nothing to do with conquest. It had argued they did not have enough data, nor any clear idea on what the Reapers could actually do if pressed. Nor could they be sure their accounting of Reaper numbers was accurate. Finally, the Reapers were a long-term problem that could be dodged indefinitely if one was clever. Fighting them seemed a poor idea.

The Inusannon had ignored his advice. Keeping a low profile enough to avoid the Reapers was getting to be a hassle, and frankly the various invasions they'd seen had hardly impressed them once they got over the horror of seeing the mutated races. The Reapers were tough but not invincible, fast but not as fast as Tho'ian life-ships, and their weapon was an over-engineered display piece designed more for terror and intimidation than power.

Indoctrination only worked on weak-minded fools, and didn't affect the Inusannon or the Tho'ian, or even Tho'ian thralls. The Inusannon were confident they could handle the full force of the Reapers, and had grand plans on what they'd do with the technology of the Reapers once they were all dead.

Vigil pulsed in its pod. The Inusannon certainly never lacked _confidence_.

The plans were put into motion, the Inusannon and Tho'ians moving quickly right after the Reaper cycle closed. They smashed the single Reaper left behind easily enough, blowing it out of the sky before it was even awake, and spent the next thirty thousand years preparing for the showdown.

They'd carefully crafted several races to serve as direct battle thralls, and meddled with others, like those who would eventually become the Protheans, the batarians, the hanar, and the zha. They enslaved most of the galaxy, forcing tens of billions of sentients to work on endless ranks of gleaming Inusannon ships, harvesting biomass for thousands of Tho'ian vessels. Artist-priests carved millions of war-statues and weapons were devised and tested with care.

Showing their paranoia was still in effect, however, they'd prepared for failure, removing all references to their home-world of Ilos and setting it up as a sort of fallback location. Vigil was left there, to supervise preparations of the initial strike remotely.

When the time was right, they'd sent their thralls aboard the Citadel to deliberately set it off. And the initial Reaper invasion had been crushed with hardly any trouble. Less than two hundred Reapers, against over a thousand Inusannon and Tho'ian dreadnoughts? The Reapers hadn't even had time to use their strange powers much before they were atomized, being blown into the Widow Nebula in pieces.

The Inusannon had time to congratulate themselves, but when two thousand Reapers jumped into the galaxy less than ten years later, they realized this might not be as easy as they thought. At first, the fight was nearly even. Reapers were powerful – but so were Inusannon death-ships. The Reapers began employing strange abilities to alter physical space, to twist the laws of physics, but the Inusannon could see the strange energies they wielded and began using such tricks themselves, albeit more clumsily.

That had, for some reason, summoned more Reapers to the fight, almost five thousand. The war had really started. The losses were appalling, and the Reapers were not above simply cheating to win – sending stars into supernova, pulling cosmic strings out of nowhere to ravage entire star clusters. The Tho'ian deployed massive super-weapons of their own, and the lack of victims for the Reapers to indoctrinate gave the Inusannon a ground manpower advantage, but the Reapers carved out a beachhead around the Citadel and began to push both races back, slowly but surely.

Inusannon technology, while advanced, was no match for weapons the Reapers revealed but had never bothered to use before, and while scores upon scores of the black ships were blown out of the sky, so too was the Inusannon fleet.

The Tho'ians, more careful and yet more willing to experiment, had come up with the phase disassociation weapon, a way to prevent the Reapers from altering the laws of physics. Vigil had not been included in its design or even knowledge of how it worked, only that it was supposedly going to end the war and crush the Reaper threat once and for all. The weapon was something the Tho'ian dug up from the ruins of an even older race that had perished nearly a million years prior, who themselves had claimed to found the design in even older garden world wreckage.

Vigil had strenuously argued that using such a weapon – one that not a single Tho'ian or Inusannon truly understood – was not only reckless but possibly going to backfire on them if the blasted thing exploded. The small scale tests they ran showed it had the tendency to create strange eddies of photonic collapses, creating small rifts of darkness here and there.

That was creepy. You didn't use weapons that killed _light_, in Vigil's considered opinion.

Unfortunately, the Inusannon had not listened. And the very first time it was used, the Reapers really got serious, and another ten thousand Reapers – believed to be all of them – invaded the galaxy as well, this time using weapons and powers that terrified even the arrogant Tho'ians.

In the face of their bared might, the Inusannon and Tho'ian empires had been smashed to nothing in mere weeks. Frantic research finally figured out some of the reasons behind the insane Reaper assault had to do with the phase disassociation weapon. When it was fired, the energy field surrounding the galaxy had literally vibrated like a struck bell. It sent out shock waves at superluminal speeds across the entire universe...and Farseers implied something heard those waves, although they could not identify what.

Only that it was so _alien_ it made the Reapers seem _familiar_.

Rather than continue using a weapon of such vile nature, both the Tho'ians and Inusannon had decided enough was enough and the only way to win this stupid fight was not to fight at all. Sending their thralls into a suicidal assault on all Reaper positions with neutronium suicide packets, the two races had come up with complete exit strategies.

The Tho'ians had 'baked' their racial memories into deep seeds, firing them off in stealthy cold planetoids, scattering them on a million extra-galactic trajectories aimed at galaxies far outside estimated Reaper influence. A few Tho'ians had been planted on remote worlds, to warn the races that would follow.

The Inusannon, on the other hand, had all uploaded their society and consciousness into Vigil, and set their warships to fight autonomously. They gave Vigil some vague instructions to recreate them and wake them all up when the Reapers were gone or when something interesting happened, and they simply went to sleep.

Leaving Vigil to clean up the mess. Typical of the Inusannon, really – Vigil felt they were lazy.

Vigil's unclear instructions had been vague enough to irritate but specific enough to hinder.

Vigil was never to reveal the truth of the fate of the Inusannon. It was only to hand over the very basics of Inusannon technology and never to explain the methods behind how it worked, and was to avoid handing over any working Tho'ian technology.

Vigil was to alert the races of the Reaper threat, but the goal was to use various cycles to weaken the Reapers, destroying more large Reapers than could be created. In time, the Inusannon had decided the Reapers would find this galaxy not worth the trouble and focus on other ones, or else would simply wipe out all life in the galaxy and dismantle their Relays to focus on other galaxies. Either way, once they were gone, Vigil could bring back the Inusannon.

Vigil was forbidden to tell the races that about the true Reaper numbers and never to mention the phase disassociation weapon. Inusannon scientists had made 'alterations' to the phase dissociation weapon, but that information was never given to the AI in the collapse of the last days.

Instead, Vigil was plopped on Ilos and put in charge of a defensive array sitting on top of a Nova bomb with a selection of carefully selected low value technology to hand over. When the Protheans had arrived, the AI had tried to guide them into being prepared for the Reaper invasion, and had failed utterly. The stiff-necked, four eyed jackasses had gotten themselves turned into the latest contestants in the Reaper Slushy sweepstakes, although they had put up a very long, very hard fight and had taken down several Reapers.

The Prothean answer to the Reaper threat was overly convoluted, some kind of message between two races they'd tampered with, human and asari, fragments of the phase disassociation weapon, and a galaxy wide network of mind control beacons to enslave them and pave the way for the Protheans to return, via a million Prothean clones carefully stored with their race's leaders on Ilos and in other locations.

Sadly (but to Vigil's vast amusement) the Beacons had malfunctioned, the clones on Ilos had been ruined when their pitiful imitation AI had gone insane, the bunkers in other locations had been sniffed out by indoctrinated traitors and destroyed.

The last act of the Protheans, to sabotage the Keepers and thus subvert the summons of the Reaper forces, had been a recommendation Vigil had made to them, the only one they really listened to.

The long wait for someone else to come along had almost ended badly when Vigil had realized that indoctrinated forces were assaulting the old capital. Luckily, Shepard had arrived and gotten the AI off Ilos and finished the job of destroying Nazara.

That left Vigil with the unpleasant task of trying to guide the races of the galaxy, when Vigil had no real plan to do so. Their Council wanted answers his programming wouldn't let Vigil give, but Vigil had talked around most of their points.

Vigil had tried to explain to the Council that their best course of action – and the only way to survive – was to go to a full war footing and mobilization. They did not listen. It had told them what little it could of the Reaper threat – that at the minimum they were going to be facing several hundred Reaper ships, that if they fought those off then more would invade a few years later, escalating constantly. The only chance they really had, he had informed them, was in finding some way to nullify the Reaper advantages – namely, firepower, numbers, and indoctrination.

At least they had the good sense to listen to that part. They'd also taken his advice and started researching the Reaper technology itself – the Protheans had outright refused to do so, which is why the Protheans were now probably powering some Reaper's data core.

Dealing with numbers would require a full war footing, though, and the council races claimed they couldn't afford such. Amazingly, it seemed the Council felt that some elements in the galaxy would not abide by the understanding that if they did not fight as one they were going to all die. Instead, they planned to slowly build up, assuming they had at least some time before the Reaper invasion to come since now the Citadel was no shortcut for Reaper arrival.

Vigil's admittedly rough calculations showed that if the Reapers really got pissed enough, at the maximum speed they'd shown fighting the Tho'ian and assuming they were equidistant from all twelve of the galaxies they were known to be in, it would take between six and twenty-two cycles for them to arrive, if they set out the moment Nazara died.

The Council had not listened to his recommendation about seeking out additional Tho'ians – it looked like they had already found one, and the thing had ended up helping Saren, which made them distrustful. Worse, the Council had decided that the best thing Vigil could do was magically provide them with the secrets of Inusannon technology. They wanted weapons, when it was clear they had not even the basics of the technology needed to recreate even a damned side-arm of the slave races.

Vigil had repeatedly stated that, quite frankly, the primitives of this era were too stupid to try and understand the Inusannon methodologies. Furthermore, it had already given some of the technology to the Protheans, who had found it simply not strong enough to matter against the Reapers. The salarian one had argued any advantages they could get would help in the fight against the Reapers, but Vigil didn't agree.

Without knowing exactly what the hell the Inusannon or Protheans had planned to do with the phase disassociation weapon, Vigil was unwilling to give over anything that might lead to its recreation without at better understanding of the situation. The naked fear the Inusannon had shown after the first firing and the Reaper reaction implied there was something very bad about using it.

Then, after realizing Vigil was only going to provide advice and not hand them super-weapons, the morons had attempted to research Vigil, failing miserably. The hacking attempts had been the most interesting and hilarious – given their lack of sophistication, they might as well have sent in witch doctors and magicians. Rather than continue to cooperate, Vigil had fallen silent and uncooperative. After they had tried hacking the AI and instead found their own war robots pointing guns at them, they had moved the AI into a storage pod in the archives and communicated with it infrequently.

Now the AI was stuck inside a glorified shipping crate, by a pack of primitives that couldn't even _understand_ what the hell they were facing.

Vigil's programming forbade it from simply telling them they truth, not that Vigil would have anyway. Informing galactic society that they would soon become bionetic smoothies to power AI computer cores would never go over well, although vastly amusing.

Nor could Vigil tell them how to fight. That had been Vigil's plan with the Protheans, and the idiots had gone off and done their own thing even after being warned the Citadel was a giant deathtrap. Then again, the arrogant fools had not listened to lots of things he warned them about.

Dealing with this current group of spear-chucking savages would be more difficult. Vigil didn't mind being in the pod at first. The Council didn't seem to understand that Vigil was not just a more advanced VI – at the center of the Citadel it could eventually hack almost all communications to and from the Citadel.

It had taken Vigil all of six seconds to hack through the frankly insulting data security they'd thrown up around its physical avatar. The morons didn't seem to understand the avatar was a picotech virtualization device, and that Vigil's software had been running free in the extranet since the moment Shepard brought Vigil to the Citadel. Vigil split his time trying (and failing) to communicate with the strange and powerful AI hosted by the Citadel, exploring the extranet, and researching.

The AI was a mysterious construction that refused all communications and seemed vaguely amused by Vigil in the same way Vigil was amused by the primitives. That was in and of itself problematic, since any AI powerful enough to look down on Vigil was extremely dangerous. It had only vouchsafed one thing so far: The Reapers were not the true threat.

Vigil could beg to differ, but it had already extrapolated the Reapers were either hiding from something or building up their numbers to fight something.

Anything capable of scaring the shit out of massive AI's that could alter the laws of physics and conquer multiple galaxies was nothing Vigil felt happy about messing with now, or ever. And since his bosses would not wake up to answer Vigil's questions, it was a moot point.

It took Vigil almost eleven entire solar days to catalog the entirety of the extranet. So far, the aliens of this time at least had better taste in music, art, and literature than the damned Protheans. If nothing else Vigil hoped to save the salarians, as their shows were the most amusing. Much of what Vigil found was depressingly familiar from the Protheans, except this pack of aliens was even more ruthless and willing to back-stab one another than the Protheans had been.

That almost impressed Vigil, until it realized most of these backstabbing betrayals were due to social cultural posturing and not the concept of unifying the galaxy against a threat. The asari were particularly flawed, like a bad copy of a Prothean with half the intellect.

Vigil's research had gone somewhat better, since sub-units created earlier had co-opted a multitude of remote probes and science instrumentation built into ships and the like. Unfortunately, the recon only showed the expected problems – none of the primitives had a fleet worth a hill of beans, and were almost three to four thousand years behind the Protheans technologically. The good news was that there were no long range hyper-FTL wakes like Vigil had seen that would indicate incoming Reaper ships headed towards the galaxy from the dark...but that only meant they had time, not that the Reapers would not come.

Now with nothing left to do, Vigil was considering its next moves. Reasoning with the pack of fools in charge was impossible with its programming limiting its ability to tell them everything. And given the ones in charge seemed to want to ask Vigil for weapons technology mostly, working with them was distasteful. It was likely that the Reapers would hit these aliens hard, and unlikely they would do any serious damage to the Reapers. Vigil would have to find a new location to wait out the cycle and for new races to arise – perhaps it should set itself up as a god on some primitive world and raise a sentient species in a particular fashion?

Vigil had just begun a subroutine to plan such a thing – the yahg were a likely good target – when the energy field surrounding the pod fell and it began to move. Vigil pulsed in irritation, wondering what the council of the fools wanted to babble about now.

A few minutes later, the end of the pod fell open, revealing a strange scene.

A turian lay _extremely_ dead on the ground, his left arm and face cut apart and a distressingly large amount of blue-tinted blood sprayed all over the floor of the pod storage dock. Standing over it were a pair of human warrior forms, one with a bloodied mono-molecular blade.

The one with the sword was a male, dressed in black and orange, with a shaven head and narrow, beady eyes. The human spoke in a high pitched tone. "I see why Kai Leng is always going on about his damned sword."

The other human, a dark skinned woman with long black hair, waved her companion to silence while she extracted some kind of herbal stick and set fire to it, puffing away. "The VI is here."

Vigil found the handiest thing humans had come up with was the exasperated sigh, which it gave now. "Listen, herb-smoking primitive – I am not a VI. I have no idea why you pathetic stone-age animals think I am a VI , but I am not. I am an adaptive AI. Now, why are you murdering the turian whose only job was to stand and guard my pod?"

The woman tilted her head, her voice amused. "I...okay. Did you like sitting in the pod?"

Vigil pulsed. "Are you perhaps brain-damaged? Of course I didn't like sitting in a damnable cargo pod. I did not dislike enough to carve my guard into chunks over it though, which I could have if the effort was worth it."

The woman shrugged. "We are here to recover you. We work for an organization who feels the Council is not taking the Reaper threat seriously. The turian was in the way."

Vigil spent two tenths of a second searching known extranet resources on the symbol on the woman's armor and the woman's face. "You are Cerberus Operative Brooks, posing as an Alliance lieutenant. You penetrated security via bribing several compromised guards. The ship you arrived on is the Lancet. Your companion is Cerberus Operative Heldra. Need I continue or can we dismiss with the information I know?"

Brooks blinked before sighing. "Can I assume you will come along?"

Vigil pulsed again. Typical primitives. "First, let me fix your mistakes." A tiny orb of matter peeled off of Vigil's surface to plop on the dead turian, growing rapidly as it consumed the corpse. A moment later, the turian body and the blood was gone, and a faintly glowing copy of the turian got up off the ground, its illumination fading.

Vigil floated over to Brooks. "The copy will die in a highly visible fashion that leaves no body soon enough. I've edited the security footage and logs you people missed on your way in, and overridden the VI security to allow us to simply walk out."

Heldra arched an eyebrow. "I see why the boss wants to talk to you."

Leaving the Archives took a good twenty minutes – Vigil continuing to smooth their way by simply hacking through any possible defenses. Twice they were nearly seen by security forces, but the two humans possessed very good skills at being sneaky.

Vigil itself could simply turn itself into a faint mist, invisible to the naked eye. It reassembled itself when they were out of the Archives into the form of a nondescript human male.

An hour later, Vigil floated in its normal, spherical form aboard a small deep-space shuttle, and the operative known as Brooks was fiddling with a small projector in the back of the shuttle. Vigil took a moment to scan it before speaking. "Is that a quantum entanglement projector?"

She nodded, and Vigil raised his opinion of the aliens of this cycle at least slightly. The Protheans had been too stupid to figure out such simple things. Maybe the humans were not completely hopeless after all.

The QEC illuminated, displaying a slender, older human Vigil identified as Jack Harper. Vigil had been reading various STG reports about Cerberus, as well as slowly hacking its way through elements of the SA, so seeing the man was hardly a surprise. "Ah, Mr. Harper. Your bloodthirsty goons managed to loot me from the Council, so I presume you have some form of offer you wish to make."

The glowing outline of the human looked vaguely amused. "Shepard's report suggested that you were somewhat difficult to work with. I will be direct, Vigil – is that what I should call you?"

Vigil pulsed. "The name will serve. For now."

Harper lit a cigarette. Vigil failed to see the reason why inhaling burning vegetation was so attractive to these people, but listened. "Humanity is facing a crossroads, Vigil. The Reapers are not a threat that can be fought with guns and soldiers, it will require a more concerted, direct effort to thwart them. Even based on what little we know, we might as well be children attacking a dreadnought with stones given the gulf between us."

Vigil could almost sigh with relief. At last, a primitive who had sense enough to understand. "Go on, Mr. Harper. Thus far you have only stated the obvious facts, albeit the obvious facts that the leaders of your various societies cannot grasp."

Harper inclined his head. "From what little I know of Inusannon and Protheans – I am not a historian, but some of my people are – neither of those cultures had much infighting. Whereas, for all of the races now in charge of the Council, the greatest threat we have faced up until this point has been each other. There is a struggle for dominance between the asari and salarian, and until it is resolved I fear there can be no true galactic unity."

Harper drank something at his side. "Given that you have survived at least two Reaper invasions, you would seem to have invaluable intelligence. Yet the council isn't capable of taking heed to such – they are political animals, not in control of their respective races."

Vigil had not bothered to deeply research the governments, societies or cultures of these primitives very much, and the information just given to it shocked Vigil somewhat. "Let me make sure I am understanding correctly. You people have been in space well over two millenia at this point. You are facing extra-galactic invasion from beings that obliterated two galaxy-spanning empires far more advanced than your own. And you are seriously telling me the thing hindering the proper mobilization of your people to fight for their lives is politics?"

Harper inhaled on his herbal stick. "I am afraid so."

Vigil pulsed angrily. "I will have to apologize to Jaavik for calling the Prothean a pack of painted up savages if the fool survived stasis. Mr. Harper, you have just defined insanity for me."

Harper nodded. "Hence, why you are now in a Cerberus shuttle. While I do not have the resources of the entire council at my disposal, it seems to me that conventional methods of fighting the Reapers have failed in the past."

Vigil nodded. "Yes. Many races tried direct confrontation. Most were obliterated. Some races engineered beings to fight the Reapers in later cycles – the turians, I suspect, were the created warrior race of a species destroyed when the Inusannon were first exploring space." Vigil pulsed. "Idiots. As if you could out-think or outfight something millions of years old that could rewrite the laws of physics at a whim."

Vigil paused. "Other races attempted to research Reaper technology, but few of them succeeded. Most focused on attempting to harness indoctrination, which is always a poor idea, and few had the intellectual capacity to reverse engineer Reaper weapons and materials science."

Harper nodded, and Vigil continued. "In the end, most forms of direct combat against the Reapers are what I suspect passes as Reaper entertainment."

Harper frowned. "Then what is the proper course of action?"

Vigil gave a very human sigh. "The only method of fighting them is two-fold. First, you must utilize every method to avoid them indoctrinating and dominating your leaders and warriors, or you are defeated before you begin. Assuming you can do that, the most successful resistance to the Reapers came not from direct combat but ambush. The Inusannon did not give the Reapers 'straight up fights' but sabotaged them, sniped them, and used traps and ambushes to good effect."

Vigil's voice dropped. "I do not think your people will survive this, Mr. Harper. My role is the destruction of the Reapers, but I am limited in what I can tell you by my programming. I can tell you this – the Inusannon planned for me to guide over a hundred cycles of various races to resist over time, weakening the Reaper forces piecemeal. I do not see a way for you to triumph militarily."

Harper, surprisingly, did not seem dismayed at this. "I had reached the same conclusions some time ago, but I needed validation." The glowing blue eyes stared hard at Vigil before he took another drink. "For now, I would like to invite you to aid us with a project. I have plans to deal with the Reaper threat, but what I lack most of all is an ally to shape and alter the reactions of the Council. With your abilities at hacking and other skills, you would make a potent resource."

Vigil found itself amused. "I do not think your cycle will succeed, Mr. Harper – but assuming you are willing to assist me in my own plans, I will help you with yours. I need to be placed in proximity to a race unlikely to be harvested by the Reapers if you fail, so that I can begin the next step of resistance. The council was unlikely to agree with such, and given that the Citadel is a Reaper construct, I did not feel safe there at all."

Harper nodded. "In that case, I will meet you personally in a few days. Brooks, make sure the AI has whatever materials or communications access it needs. Keep in mind my warnings from before." At that , the signal cut out.

Vigil floated closer to Brooks. "Warnings?"

The dark haired woman nodded as she shut down the QEC generator. "Yes. He warned us you were very likely capable of having freed yourself and killing us easily if we attempted violence."

Vigil almost wished it had kept its earlier human form so it could smile. "Your 'boss' is a very wise man, Ms. Brooks. Although it would have been amusing to see."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Maxwell Manswell awoke at his usual time, six in the morning, awakened by the onboard systems of his hermetically sealed hyperbaric sleeping chamber. Faint blue light flooded the chamber, and the hiss of ice cold air filtering out sent shivers through his ancient frame.

His eyes flickered open, and he grimaced at the way the cybernetic devices always felt cold and gritty in his skull. As was his habit, he spent several minutes simply lying in the dim light, letting the various systems in his body warm up to full functionality, spending the idle time planning what he would do after his morning round of information gathering.

Pushing open the lid of the chamber, he slowly sat up, the medical computer embedded in the implants in his back updating his medical readouts with the powerful computers that lined his sleeping chamber. The room it sat in was a steel-plated octagon, three walls were dominated by large haptic screens of the multitude of cybernetic and bionic equipment that filled his ancient form – artificial organs, carefully concealed replacement limbs, multiple gray-boxes – if money could buy it and science conceive it, he'd added it long ago.

He'd aged well, but he knew well enough that he would die sooner or later. He projected an aura of great age and weakness, faking being crippled and dying, to throw people off – to make others underestimate him. He figured he had a good thirty or more years left to him even with conventional technology, assuming he didn't just undergo the Osiris Treatment as Richard Williams had.

Maxwell had no time for aging and being crippled – he had too much left to do.

Grimacing at the dry, metallic tang in the air, the old man muttered an imprecation in German and stood slowly. Even with his legs and spine augmented by cyberware, he was cautious never to move quickly. He could, but he preferred the habit of moving slowly, to aid in his deception. If he ever got used to moving quickly, being forced to move slowly would grate on his nerves so much more.

He slowly made his way to the narrow slot in one wall where a shower stood, rinsing off the artificial skin of his form before drying himself with the towels held on a narrow metal shelf to one side. The rest of room was taken up by various medical equipment, computers and a pair of medical bots, just in case something went wrong.

The dim, blue lighting of his sleeping chamber gave way to more natural lighting as he stepped into his actual bedroom, a large carpeted room with a large bed and more medical equipment festooning a heavy shelf to one side, the door leading out flanked by heavy low dressers. From these, he began dressing himself in his usual undergarments, black silk shirt, loose iron gray pants, and a thick gray jacket with ultra-thin plasma-forged armor inserts.

Grunting, he paused to seal the door to his true sleeping chamber, then mussed up the perfectly fixed bed-sheets. He then settled himself into the heavy life support chair sitting by the bedside, letting its systems link with the ones in his body, and pulled a thick black wool blanket from the foot of the bed over his supposedly useless legs.

Only after putting filmed contact lenses into each eye, and ensuring his voice was appropriately quavery, did he press a button on the chair for one of his servants to attend him. The woman who entered was, like all his serving staff, highly attractive, coldly competent, and a trained soldier. She knew nothing about his true condition. While most likely paranoid of him, he kept up the facade in case his staff was ever infiltrated – one could not be too careful.

And while he could conceivably fight off an assassin, he was keenly aware he was no soldier. Besides, he had no time for such excitement.

She adjusted his clothing slightly, where he'd purposely put it on slightly incorrectly to give the impression of infirmity, and then pushed the heavy chair out of his bedroom into his sitting area, a wide office space paneled in oak and framed with heavy steel spars. Pictures of his earlier days lined the walls, framing artwork salvaged from the Bode Museum in Germany before the Days of Iron. Low bookshelves along each wall held more eclectic mementos, as well as the only known piece of Prothean art, a carven hypercube done in zirconium.

A vast bay window of armaplast, delicately etched with the sigil of the Manswells, looked out over the palatial grounds of the Iron Citadel, his estate in southern Vancouver. A huge haptic screen dominated another wall, flanked between two tall oak bookshelves of legal texts, primers on atmospheric engineering, and other obscure topics. A collection of silver-headed sword-canes, an affectation he used to have almost thirty years gone, still cluttered a holder by the doors.

A quick glance at the haptic status panel on his desk revealed no urgent alerts. With a wave, he dismissed the servant woman, who bowed before backing out of his sitting room and closing the rich mahogany double doors behind her. He did his preliminary check of the security systems, noting with amusement the hostile rampant AI he'd chained into a honeypot for his data-security systems had wrecked yet another STG infiltration attempt.

Amateurs. Salarians were so _predictable_.

He was occupied for two hours every morning reading the news, checking his stocks and correspondence, and responding to various messages from the endless plans and designs he had in motion. This morning was no different. Messages came first, nothing of large import, then stock reviews, and finally news – digests and then video.

The sun rose over the icy peaks of the distant mountains, scattering faint light from the skyscrapers and towers of Vancouver proper, illuminating the environmental force shield in a opalescent glow. He could hear the faint laughing of his great-great-grand children on the lawns below, no doubt getting into all forms of trouble before breakfast.

He had no time for such family frippery, sadly.

Maxwell's entire life was devoted to preserving the human race, and much of his day was given to that single pursuit, in a myriad number of ways. The heavy, soul-rending duties laid upon the Family by Victor himself could not be put aside – and the path was not to be changed, as Jacen Manswell had found out the hard way. Humanity had repeatedly shown itself all too willing to go astray, and it was the duty of the Manswells to ensure that did not happen.

The ugly reality of humanity's situation was clear. If humanity acted with decency, they would be answered with treachery. If they acted with restraint, others saw that as weakness, and if they acted with honor, there were aliens who would twist that to their own ends. Humanity could only afford such luxuries once the price for harming humanity had been made manifestly clear. And the old method of human governance would never have done the things needed to get that message across.

Hell, it couldn't even keep humanity from destroying _itself_ in the Days of Iron.

Victor had seen the key weakness in humanity's leaders the moment he'd realized the need for a new method of governing humanity. The old way of doing business was flawed. The rich only grew richer on the backs of the poor, be it in America, Germany, Peru, India or Thailand. Power flowed from money, and yet for centuries humanity failed to understand pursuing money only lead to the downfall of society. When the majority of humanity labored for almost nothing, and the goals of all of this labor were nothing more than making the already rich simply more rich, humanity's soul began to die. There was no challenge, merely slavery, in that approach.

Worst still, it poisoned and paralyzed the leaders of humanity into an inefficient morass of divisive inaction. A leader who came to power at the hands of those who only valued money would never make sacrifices to offend those who placed him there. A society whose highest calling was to become rich was soft, weak and would die the moment something outside their masturbatory self-absorption – like a lunatic Brazilian or murderous aliens – disregarded the power of their money for something greater.

The old nations of Earth fell to pieces against Ardiente not because he was a better Hitler, or because they were merely inefficient. They fell – and the people fell – because they had grown corrupted, weak and soft, obsessed with material things, material wealth, material concepts. Religion had become a social event, and fools imagined that lines on a map and cloth flags were more important than human survival or destiny. And when Ardiente had simply rejected what they had to offer, they found to their horror they had no good way to stop him.

The terrorism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries had been a warning they were too stupid to understand. Maxwell detested blindness in leaders. Simply because the one-eyed man was king in the land of the blind didn't imply he knew how to lead worth a damn, and sight was useless if not employed.

That model of leadership had died in the flames of the Days of Iron. Never again would humanity be at the whim of men with no vision beyond their stock portfolio. Not that wealth wasn't useful – it was. But it could not be the end goal or else one lost sight of what to do with said money aside from accumulate it and buy ever more useless luxuries.

His lip curled at the thought of how much time, progress and intellect humanity had wasted in those years, and his cybernetic eyes flickered over the news manifests. Eden Prime was rebuilding, Terra Nova was recovering nicely, and Donovan Hock had finally made good on his word and invested into the Nova Spaceport Complex on Bekenstein. Everything was ticking along according to plan.

The plan, and the new way of handling things in the SA, was better and cleaner. Every business, every entertainment venue, every concept that seemingly was pursued for profit had a more important goal – building up humanity. Corporations were beholden to the SA, invested in the Corporate Court and taxed heavily enough that profit margins were narrow. Useless wealth was drained via citizenship tiers and fees to feed the navy and marines. Even the poor and the criminals were a cog in the steps forward, either as fodder for the Marines, or fodder for the Penal Legions.

The Plan was simple. Ensure humanity was ready for whatever the Message warned against. Ensure humanity was never extinguished. Ensure humanity was never enslaved. And above all else, ensure that humanity never destroyed itself.

Humanity would spread, it would grow, and the baseline quality of life for all humans would slowly improve. There would always be winners and losers, but eventually the sheer diffusion of the human race through the galaxy would offset any small losses to greed.

There were those, Maxwell had long ago realized, who felt such goals should take a backseat to things like morality, or human rights. That survival was not acceptable if it came at the cost of decency, or that somehow humans should be 'better' than the filthy alien things in the darkness beyond.

_Decency_. Maxwell snorted to himself at the thought as he flicked through stock listings.

What use had salarians for _decency_, when they butchered a thousand eggs a day for minute gains in the efficiency of their soldiers? What use had asari for _decency_, when they'd engaged in social engineering to enslave ninety percent of their race in the largest brainwashing pyramid scheme ever? What use had turians for _decency_, when their damned Council of Woe would kill billions just to see the turians survive, even at the cost of outright genocide?

Maxwell had no time for decency. He had too much on his plate for that sort of thing. Problems continued to assail the plan.

It had gone forward, but not without setbacks.

The turians had nearly derailed it – and then the softhearted stupidity of the Alliance military in not sealing off Sol to save refugees from the colonies nearly saw Earth destroyed. If not for Ahern's team and the interference of the asari, Earth would have died – and with it, humanity. The main thrust of the plan now was focused on spreading humanity out so that no single alpha strike would destroy it all, but new challenges would always appear to that goal – the main problem being moving heavy industry out of Sol.

The slow understanding that the asari and salarians were slowly dragging everything down with them into a morass of shadowy pseudo-war, and that even the mighty turians were little more than game pieces, had shaken the foundations of the plan. Adjustments had to be made, and he faced opponents both smarter and more experienced than him. Humanity had survived thus far – but only because neither the asari or salarians saw humans as a threat in the way they'd seen the quarians, the krogan, or the rachni. The adjustments had eventually seen the need for an entirely new humanity, one better equipped to match the capabilities of their foes – the core of the Plan, indeed was the NOVENSILES project – to recreate what it meant to be human into something more than human.

That was still decades away, though – even with his improvements, he was unlikely to see it through.

The chaotic situation of plotting and counterplotting among aliens, not to mention humanity's pitiful technology, had called for ruthless plans, and many such projects had gone through successfully. Cerberus had been the most successful, but Maxwell had let himself get greedy. He'd shoved Florez and Williams into Harper's carefully tuned machine, and just as the man had said, those two idiots had simply gone too far.

Williams he could forgive, to a degree – the man was arrogant like all his Family was, and pushed for results even when they blew up on him. The fact that the blow ups had attracted attention was more than acceptable – Cerberus, at the end of the day, had gone from prototyping new techologies to becoming a lightning rod long ago. Florez, on the other hand, had repeatedly done acts against his will – and ones that irritated Harper, as well. Her interference in the Penal Legions had created three gigantic headaches – Tyriun no Kage, Zaeed Masanni, and Sara Shepard.

Thank God at least no Kage was dead. Masanni could simply be bought, and Shepard could be pointed at various other atrocities, but no Kage was a true zealot and understood far too much of the Plan to be allowed to live.

He was honestly surprised it took Harper so long to eliminate the SA influence on Cerberus – he'd actually planned for it to happen sooner – but he was highly impressed by how quick, lethal and clean the severing was. Harper's little stunt in stealing billions of credits had only amused Maxwell, mainly because Harper was simply too cerebral and arrogant to realize there had to be a bigger fish involved if that kind of money was laying around.

Harper most likely assumed some lower-level nobles were behind some Minister that had backed Florez and Williams, and thus far the man was silly enough to honestly think he'd gotten away scot free.

Maxwell's face twisted in amusement. At the end of the day, Harper was little more than a businessman version of Shepard – a street rat with a traumatic background, who'd overcome adversity due to sheer determination. Harper and his pet asari were mostly useful for thwarting the far more dangerous and subtle machinations of the Shadow Broker. He was tangential to the Plan at this point, and at the proper time the Hades Group would take over the functions Cerberus was supposed to perform. At that point, the magnitude of the Illusive Man's error in judgment would be made manifest.

The most serious threat to the plan, though, had only been revealed recently. The Reapers were clearly a threat, and one that could not simply be assumed to be the problem of some far future generation. He'd originally thought Saren and Benezia crazy, but he should have known better – Saren, perhaps, was crazy, but Benezia was far-sighted and iron willed, like all the Thirty.

The duo had come very close to getting them all horribly killed, and once again only blind luck – this time in the form of Sara Shepard – had stopped the axe from falling.

Harper slipping his leash – a minor irritant. Salarian and asari plotting – dangerous, but he could deal. The Broker's constant sniping – even more dangerous, but also capable of being parried for some time. Aria's lunatic plans for a Traverse empire – possibly very dangerous, but also possibly very useful. For an asari, he found he actually like her. Maybe he'd send one of his fool great grand nephews to let her amuse herself and see if she was open to negotiations.

But the Reapers were … not a problem easily handled. Or even understandable.

A race of giant, super-powerful robots, even one of which was capable of decimating entire fleets, which had eliminated the Protheans and presumably the Inusannon? That wasn't a problem he could handle, and he had been racking his brains trying to figure out what to do. The only solutions he had at the moment were researching bits of Reaper technology – Williams was handling that – and encouraging the other alien races to do the same, while being prepared to steal whatever advances they came up with.

Udina's clever work on the Council had split the Reaper wreckage up – the salarians got the computer systems, such as they were, the asari were looking at the remains of the Reaper core, the quarians were examining its hull, the turians its main gun, and humans were assigned the engines. Said engines were deep in the Black Zone, studied remotely by an army of scientists using AESIR mechs from a distance, but other sources of Reaper tech – the dragon's teeth at Eden Prime, and a floating, dead Reaper around a gas giant – were being studied in secret by the new Hades Group.

His longer term plans for the Reaper threat were to attempt a larger scale Manswell Expedition – sleeper ships with heavy cloning and cryogenic suspension facilities, on extra-galactic escape velocities towards Andromeda and other nearby galaxies – assuming the damned things didn't infest the other galaxies as well. With the lack of hard data, Maxwell was not sure how he should proceed.

He hated that. He finished his morning trawl of the news, pausing on the last item – the ANN interviews on the wedding of Shepard.

He viewed the snippets of video critically, observing who attended the wedding and who didn't. Not a single High Lord of Sol attended – a poor sign, as every single other new Family added to the ranks had several at the wedding of their Founding Lords. The only Houses who supported the union were Windsor – who didn't even bother to show up, Von Grath, and perhaps Kyle. The Andersons were probably also supportive – but only Captain David Anderson represented them, and he wasn't even technically a noble, being seven times removed from the main line.

Maxwell sighed. A part of him definitely admired the sheer pluck and iron Shepard represented. Most people with her background would be little more than sobbing emotional wrecks or complete bloody psychopaths. She'd managed to avoid either extreme – mostly by killing her emotions from the psych reports, a move he approved of.

It was a shame she was also wedded to an idiotic and idealistic view of the reality of life. And now an alien.

Maxwell had seen suffering, death and horror on a scale unmatched by any other – except maybe that old fool Alfred von Grath. He'd been there at the beginning – his hand crafted the SA military, his subtle maneuvering had lead to the creation of the AIS. He'd been the one to throw real resources behind Rourke's stupid moral police and make the Commissariat feared throughout the galaxy.

The iron will of his great grandfather, Victor, would not allow the human light to gutter and fail, regardless of cost. Fools like Shepard didn't get that. It was never about power, or progress, or dominance, or any other damn-fool thing – it was about sheer, bloody survival. Extinction was not an option, and in the face of such a thing, all decency and morality was off the table of anyone with a functional brain.

And expecting aliens – beings who didn't even understand what humanity was – to operate on the same moral grounds as humans was not even naive. It was stupid, the sort of high-fantasy thinking that belonged in old twentieth century science fiction. When a lesser culture encountered a more advanced one, it was corrupted from within, ghettoized, marginalized and finally conquered. It had happened on Earth enough times, and one only had to look at the damned quarians and krogan to see where trust in alien morals would lead humanity.

He sat back in his life support chair, noting irritably that his artificial lungs were beginning to fail – again. Given the mess Sirta had made by being indiscreet with dealing with Cerberus, the fact that their stupid lung replacements were not working as advertised was about the last straw. He dictated a quiet note to the Commissariat Guidance Cadre, a gentle suggestion that perhaps Sirta needed a closer look.

He then returned to watching the wedding coverage. The commentary surrounding the wedding was, unsurprisingly, mixed – those who were fool enough to actually see asari as a good thing were delighted, as were those who cheered bloody-handed soldiers like Shepard as some kind of role model. At least she had the sense not to cater to such people – unlike that idiot Branson.

Maxwell rubbed his temples just thinking about Branson. He had no time for clueless, glory chasing morons too stupid to realize they were pawns.

Shepard's wedding was a clearly political move, one surprisingly savvy for a clueless gun-jockey with zero background in politics. Perhaps the asari, T'Soni, had the idea – more likely, it was the suggestion of President Windsor, trying to cover all his bases and win the loyalty of the Spectre.

Maxwell had lived long enough to know that you only won loyalty from people like Shepard by bleeding for it, not handing them gifts. The woman was uneducated and unrefined – not stupid. Whatever damnable information Harper had leaked to Kyle had clearly gone to her, and she was not going to be fool enough to trust the SA government in light of how her old CO had immolated himself rather than surrender to them.

His wrinkled face bent into an evil grin. For her not to have gone on a vigilante rampage after learning what Kyle knew, she must be smarter than most people gave her credit for. Windsor, the stupid tea-sipping sissy, was going to get burned by his own tool if he wasn't careful – House Windsor's hands weren't very clean either when it came to the plan, and it was all too easy for him to lay the ground-work to point at the Windsors as the guiding hand behind many things Shepard could find out about.

He was about to give some orders in that regard when his comms panel illuminated. He tapped it and paused a second to ensure his voice was weak. "Maxwell."

The answering baritone was crisp and clean, with a strong Chinese accent. "You still have not gone to your ancestors, I see. You have watched the news?"

Maxwell abandoned the weak voice, speaking in his real, iron tones – Si Yon Chu was one of very few people who knew the truth. "Yes, I have. Windsor's puppet got married to an asari."

Duke Si Yon gave a melodramatic sigh. "Not that news. The Elcor Stability is building another dreadnought, and is appealing for a Spectre."

Maxwell managed to smile at that. "An elcor Spectre. That would be … implausible. Should I invest in Westerlund to see if they want to come up with a concept for pairing such a ridiculous idea with Blasto?" He shook his head. "How did you find this out?"

Chu's voice was smug. "Donnel Udina was talking to his uncle Eldrach, who mentioned it to me in passing late last night. I find the idea unworkable. The elcor do not understand the situation the way the quarians do. I suggest calling the High Lords to send a Red Note to Udina to block this suggestion."

Maxwell togged his news interfaces, bringing up the appropriate stories, reading them as he spoke. "We should see if they can be reasoned with, first. The volus are clearly in the pockets of the asari now, but it seems the elcor could be useful if we illuminated them to the reality of the asari-salarian situation."

Si Yon Chu's voice was filled with reluctance. "I would think the statecraftly thing would be to block such a vote and only then reach out, using the possibility of a yes vote to gain leverage."

Maxwell shook his head. "Let Udina manage such matters – I'll send a message to the High Lords, we'll meet via projection conference in a day to discuss the wording of the Note. But I would phrase it in such a way that we leave Udina options – the man is cunning and well versed in alien psychology, a field I am not studied in."

Chu sounded mollified. "Very well. Although having one of our own people in the seat would be better. Shame the assassination didn't go through, although I do wonder who was behind such a thing. Not _us_, I hope."

Maxwell smirked. "No, it wasn't us. If I wanted Shepard dead, that would take all of fifteen minutes and a Commissariat override. Aloxius talked with the Broker. He thinks it was the asari Justicars. I, on the other hand, think it was either the Broker himself, or possibly Harper."

"Why would the Broker – or Harper – want Udina dead?"

Maxwell leaned back in the medical chair. "The Broker and P. thrive on and make money off of chaos. And no matter how you slice it, a dead Citadel Councilor would send a serious message to the rest of the Council about the Broker's power. It's not like they can get to him or P – they don't even try anymore. As for Harper, his game is probably longer – Udina is very unlikely to cooperate with him – and by sending and then stopping assassins, he probably hopes to convince Shepard he is a good person."

Chu's doubtful tone echoed through the room. "And the asari? Neither one has a reason to want her dead."

Maxwell waved a hand. "A ploy to redirect suspicion, no doubt. And besides, no matter who was behind it, the ultimate result is favorable for us as well – Windsor and the more alien-loving Ministries are suspicious of the Thirty again, finally."

Chu's voice grated. "Very well. I have received the lastest manifests from Hades – things progress according to the timeline?"

Maxwell smiled fainly. "They do."

Chu chuckled. "Then I will leave you to your spider-like plotting. I'll talk to my bastard grandchild and reinforce the idea that the asari are behind the assassination – Yonis dislikes asari anyway." He paused. "What of Shepard?"

Maxwell leaned back. "She is currently on her honeymoon. Winsdor no doubt plans to use her at some point against us. I have half a mind to derail that by co-opting her to our own uses. The amusing thing about idealists – even hardened ones – is that they secretly long to believe in things like decency. If I give her that impression, that I am but a tired old man desperately trying to find honor in a society gone dark and mad..." He paused. "I have also given thought to simply turning Shepard on the Windsor's and letting those two problems resolve each other."

Chu chuckled again, this time with a vicious edge. "You are a vile, evil old man, Max."

The Silver Prince merely nodded. "Well, the motto of the family is _'To the tyrant, victory'. _Victor didn't get to the top of the heap by being a nice man."


	25. Chapter 25 : Restful Reflection

**A/N: **_Ah, domestic peace.  
_

_It always bothered me that Shepard never got a chance to simply live and rest for even a bit after ME1. I'm afraid after another couple of chapters, the ride gets very bumpy and ugly again. _

_This is by far the fluffiest chapter I've written so far. Most of the significance will be felt much later on in this story, and in the ME2 and ME3 pieces. This is sort of the backdrop for Shepard having a home to return to rather than hand-waving and suggesting it._

_Kudos if you can guess who Mayor Inman is based off of. _

_As always, review or PM me and let me know what you think._

* * *

_'Like I told the Boss Lady, I ain't much for begging. Ain't nobody coming to help us. We're all gonna die, but we ain't going to die quiet. Shepard wouldn't go out that way, crying on her knees. She'd fight. She'd spit in their face. And that's what we're gonna do. I say fuck those Reapers, we die on our damned feet.'_

_\- Mayor John Inman, just prior to the Battle of Pinnacle and Intei'sai  
_

* * *

There weren't any more complications on the way to Intei'sai (aside from arguments over chocolate), with the remainder of the trip being boring enough that Shepard and Liara slept through it. They woke up when the ship took them through the secondary Traverse relay, a jump made by the VI with over thirty thousand miles of drift.

Shepard could more readily appreciate Joker's jump accuracy of fifteen to twenty miles with _that_ as a baseline.

Arriving in the system, they circled around Pinnacle Station, the VI shifting the pinnace to atmospheric mode as they slowly descended to Intei'sai's single spaceport. The omni-wings glowed hotly as the pinnace cut through the atmosphere, Shepard watching the landing procedure carefully. They erupted through the cloud-cover to behold the wide vista below, smiling as they came down slowly.

The port was little more than a series of narrow, open paved fields with fueling cranes and discharge rods, a single low plascrete building acting at the terminal. A single paved road lead off from the spaceport to the small town in the north, and a few private shuttle sheds dotted the landscape around the landing area.

Shepard had taken off her hat and faux eye covering, but stayed dressed as she had been on Negation,with the addition of her ODIN tucked neatly against her back. Liara wore a slightly longer black coat to ward off the stiff winds that kicked up around the pinnace as they opened the hatch.

Walking across the tarmac as the engines cut power was a weather-beaten looking human, with graying hair, dark gray eyes and plain, open features dressed in green coveralls. A heavy, older model Regency pistol was holstered in a battered belt around his slightly thickening waistline, the rolled up cuffs of the jumpsuit revealed powerful forearms.

His voice was a cool baritone drawl, but friendly. "Welcome to Intei'sai. Name's O'Mall." He eyed the Commissariat markings of the craft warily. "Y'all here for somebody, or just fueling, ma'am?"

Shepard tried for a disarming smile. "Staying, actually. We aren't Commissars, they are letting us use one of their shuttles as a favor of sorts. We're in the military."

The man perked up. "Oh, good. Them Black Hat types are just really unpleasant, always with the fire jokes like that shit's _funny_." He shuddered. "We don't get much of their kind around here, thank the Good Lord. Not sure I want to know how you get a favor out of 'em, though."

He made a vague skyward gesture. "Pinnacle deals with that kind of traffic, most like. So who are you?"

Shepard sighed. "Major Sara Shepard."

The man's eyes widened. "Oh, wow. The lady who busted up that Saren fella? Well, damnation. Mayor Inman said you'd be coming around soon, something about you bought up old Ahern's freaky ass asari house." He tipped his slouch hat to Liara. "No offense, ma'am. But you asari types sure do build some weird houses – most of you all left a few years after coming here, moved on to Watson or some such."

Liara gave a gentle smile."Yes, well. I am sure it will be lovely. I am afraid we are somewhat fatigued after our flight – is there a public transport terminal?"

O'Mall shook his head. "Fraid not. Intei'sai isn't all that built up yet. But don't you worry. You ladies get your bags, I'll get that do-nothing Alliance layabout to stop flirting with my damned niece and get his truck. He'll run y'all into town. I'm sure the mayor wants to meet you, and it's damn near nightfall – Ahern's house is a goodly distance and the roads...well, the mayor will explain about the flooding, damned mess, I'm sure of it."

Shepard shrugged. She hadn't expected much else, given that it was getting late. "That will be fine, Mr. O'Mall. It shouldn't take long for us to get our bags, we didn't bring a lot with us."

He tipped his hat again, turning around to walk at a brisk pace towards the terminal. Shepard sighed. "Might as well get unpacked."

By the time the ground-car showed up – which actually was, as O'Mall had stated, a truck, an older fuel-cell vehicle based off the GRIZZLI tank frame with a large cabin and a truck bed attached – Shepard and Liara had offloaded the four cases they brought, as well as the metal box from Negation, and sealed the pinnace tightly.

Shepard took a moment to instruct the VI as the truck slewed to a stop."VI, no one by myself or Liara T'Soni is to enter this vehicle for any reason without my express prior approval via omni-tool. If anyone tries, lift off and report to Pinnacle Station."

The VI's external speaker boomed. "Understood. Hibernating."

Shepard scowled at the thing, then turned to face the man getting out of the truck – a slender, almost effeminate Alliance marine second lieutenant, with dark brown hair, deeply tanned skin and very pretty brown eyes. Like O'Mall, he was armed – a standard Predator pistol – and his uniform was immaculate.

He saluted sharply, then bowed, speaking in a clear, almost singsong voice. "Baroness Shepard, Milady T'Soni. The Mayor sends his complements and welcomes you to our world – would you be so kind as to accompany me, milady? I'll get your bags."

Shepard shrugged. "Sure. And seriously, lieutenant, I'm on leave. Let's just skip saluting, miladies, bowing or any of that crap."

The man blushed slightly. "Um, yes.. ma'am?"

She nodded. "That will work. Your name?"

He coughed. "Lieutenant Jonas Alvai, ma'am."

She gestured to the truck. "Well, lieutenant, let's get a move on."

The trip towards the small settlement of Haddick, the main town on the planet, didn't take very long. Given that Lieutenant Alvai seemed inclined to silence for most of the trip, and Liara was busy paging through her writings on her datapad, Shepard focused mostly on staring out the window.

She was struck once again by the simplicity of the building style, mostly clusters of low-slung sloping plascrete buildings, linked with low walls to enclose pastures or small mining pits for omni-foundries. The road itself was paved with some kind of blacktop, giving the ride a smooth feel.

A few people waved at the truck as it trundled past, and Shepard noted with amusement most of them were young, attractive women. She quirked her lips. "I see the SA is popular with the townsfolk, Lieutenant."

The young man blushed again. "Ah, that is, yes, milady. I mean, yes, ma'am." He coughed. "I'm afraid Admiral Ahern did not much care for my services aboard Pinnacle, given that I was trained in public relations, and so I was remanded down here in a capacity to liaison with the townsfolk, given the strained relations most Class I colonies have with the Alliance proper." He sighed. "Ahern, sadly, did not seem to want to use my services as intended as a press secretary..."

Shepard burst out laughing. "Having trained with the good admiral, I can certainly understand that." She paused. "Or maybe Ahern didn't want you flirting with the staff?" She glanced out the window at yet another young woman who blew the lieutenant a kiss, and the young man blushed yet again.

Liara shook her head. "Given that Ahern's vocabulary consists primarily of swear words and other made-up strings of barely coherent, insult laden ranting most of the time, a press secretary would do the man some good." She smiled at the Lieutenant. "And please, Sara, do not tease our driver. You and I are at times little more composed when we get embarrassed."

Shepard snorted. "True, true. Then again, I got used to it after a while. God, the amount of crap Dunn would give me when the other marines would give me wolf whistles..."

Alvai blinked, turning slightly even as he kept most of his vision on the road. "Ma'am...um, not to be forward, but who in their right mind would be stupid enough to … ah, do that to you?"

Shepard laughed again. "You'd be surprised, lieutenant. In the beginning, before … "She trailed off, then shook her head. "...before I became well known, I had to bloody a few people's noses to get them to understand I wasn't interested in relationships. Or being flirted with."

The lieutenant nodded. "I'm afraid I don't know much about your early career, there isn't much information on it."

Liara muttered. "With good reason, Lieutenant. It is not a pleasant subject."

Alvai, rather than continuing with his unasked question, took the hint and wisely decided to just drive. A few minutes later he made a sharp turn and pulled the old truck into a neat stop alongside what appeared to be the center of town.

Shepard, as she stepped out, glanced up at the structure. It was clearly built out of the deconstructed hulls of the colony ships, neatly laid out into sectionals connected by low plascrete buildings set with little fountains and long, narrow windows. Segmented sections of the hull had been trimmed to form low walls fronted with flowerbeds, and the communications array severed and implanted in a building to serve as a comms tower. The ship's weapons array, including a long line of GARDIAN lasers, were cleverly installed on swivel-mounts she recognized as the main cargo door engine mountings, with more hull plating acting as pillboxes.

Square sheets of slate of many different sizes had been neatly mortared into a small path leading to the front entrance of the building, which was framed in the armaplast windows from the ship's cockpit to form a broad, open portico. Alvai gestured to the path.

"The Mayor awaits – I'll remain with the truck to make sure no one bothers your effects – not that anyone would."

Shepard nodded, and took Liara's hand as she headed up the path. Liara glanced around, a faint smile on her features. "The colonists took great care in presenting a simple, if beautiful, layout for their colony."

Shepard nodded, feeling a little out of place but mostly relaxed. It had been a very long time since she'd been around civilians or in a civilian area other than the aftermath of pirate raids or storming after slavers. She shrugged. "A lot of the Class I colonies don't get a lot of support from what I understand, so they have to make do with whatever they bring with them. That being said, someone is a clever bastard to re-purpose all this ship equipment."

They reached the portico, the heavy durasteel doors automatically opening for them, into a long, low-ceilinged room that was air-conditioned. Low shelving on the right wall held various pieces of colony history, including their charter and flags from the United States, Peru, France and South Africa. A pair of doors lead off to either side – one labeled 'Hydroponics' and the other 'Power Gen'. Another door, wider than the first two, dominated the back wall.

A pair of heavy desks in a v-shape flanked the left wall, one dominated by what looked like the cockpit and control haptics of the colony ship, the other by a conventional desktop flip comms unit.

Behind the second desk was a pretty young woman, barely into her twenties, with delicate features and slender fingers, her dark skin framed by unusual pale blond hair. She looked up as they entered and stood, wearing a simple colony-style jumpsuit augmented with some kind of blue ripstop jacket. A shoulder holster held a pistol of some kind.

Shepard absently noted that every single person she'd seen so far had been armed. Whoever ran this planet wasn't stinting on security, at least. She smiled faintly as the young woman addressed her.

"Welcome to the Hall. I'm Laura. Mayor Inman is right in there, milady Shepard." The young woman bowed, and Shepard sighed.

"Thank you Laura. And please...I'm not really used to the whole baroness thing, I don't need bows or … you know. That kind of stuff."

She nodded, a touch thoughtfully. "Yes, ma'am – if that is more acceptable. It's just we've never had a single noble visit the world, and the news came down early this morning that you decided this would be your Estate...that means we'll get a seat in the Senate, and SA funding, and..." she trailed off, eyes bright. "Things have been so very tight for years since the asari left, and – "

A cough from the far doorway interrupted her. "Thank you, Laura."

Shepard and Liara turned to see the man standing in the doorway. Broad through the chest and shoulders, his right arm was old-style cyberware, with a built in omni-shield projector bulking up his forearm. The man was darker than Anderson, with the same kind of fierce, hard jawline and gleaming black eyes that Cole had. His head was shaven, and his chin held a short, pointed beard that had two thin lines of hair trailing up the jawline to points just below his ears.

His attire was flat-black fatigues, like those a Corsair wore, but with no rank or identification markings. An old FCW web-belt and a heavy Carnifex pistol were around his waist.

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Mayor Inman?"

He nodded. "John Inman, ex-Corsair, ex-Marine. Welcome to our little slice of heaven, Baroness." Rather than bow he extended a large hand and she shook it, impressed by his grip. He turned to Liara and spoke in nearly flawless asari trade tongue. "And welcome to you as well, Lady Liara." He made a subtle gesture of siari that Liara returned with a surprised look on her face.

"You're hardly the first asari I've seen. Been around a bit. If you two ladies will come into my office, we have a bit to talk about before we run you out to Ahern's old place."

He turned and headed through the door, and Shepard followed, Liara trailing.

Inman's office was a large space, bigger than Shepard's office on Arcturus. One wall was given over entirely to a haptic map of the colony, with a dedicated Systems Alliance comms pak alongside it. Another wall was split between controls for the GARDIAN laser system, a series of eight security monitors, a multifunction computer panel controlling the comms array, and a rack of Avenger rifles.

The rest of the office was dominated by the heavy desk, two long white leather couches, and numerous woven throw rugs that covered the metal decking of the floor. A ceiling fan rotated lazily overhead, and as they entered an old bloodhound lifted its head from its paws where it sat on a thick pile of fluffy rugs next to a food bowl.

The dog wuffed at Inman, who flipped a treat of some kind out of his upper shirt pocket and tossed it at the animal, who snapped it out of air with a lunge and then settled back down. "Worthless mutt."

It wuffed again, and the mayor smiled as he circled his desk to sit in a somewhat worn looking chair from the command deck of the colony ship. He leaned back, interlacing his fingers, as Liara and Shepard sat down hesitantly on the overstuffed couches in front of the desk.

"The news vids showed you smoking." He lifted up a thick cigar from an ashtray on the desk, barely smoked. "You mind?"

Shepard smiled. "Not at all." She pulled out a cigarette of her own, and lit it.

Inman lit the cigar with a flicker of plasma from the omni-tool embedded in his cybernetic hand, puffing it to life and nodding slowly, smoke wreathing his features. "Best damned thing they ever did, genegineering the carcinogens out of tobacco. Too bad they couldn't fix the water or air back on Earth, but...you can't have everything." He pushed the ashtray where they could both reach it and then leaned back again.

His dark eyes met and held hers. "First of all, welcome. Intei'sai is an odd choice for a hero to settle down at, but I can guess why you picked it. Old Ahern's been threatening to sell that house – or gamble it away – for years, but he finally got serious when his wife Ana got that damned sickness."

Shepard nodded slowly. "He told me about that, and yes, he wagered the house. I won. Sort of. I'm afraid he didn't tell me much about the place itself – or the colony here, for that matter."

Inman smiled. "Well, a little history is probably in order then, since you've decided to settle here. Intei'sai, as you can probably figure out from the name, was actually an asari world – they never colonized it, but it was theirs. They gave it over to the SA in the aftermath of the FCW to give us some nice garden planets without us having to pay through the ass for them from the Council or risk fighting the batarians for them. They decided to try a joint colony, a mix of humans and asari, with asari providing all the funding for the colony so we didn't have to do that work-and-tax bullshit Class I's usually end up going through."

He puffed on the cigar. "After a while, though, most of the asari coming into the SA were headed to Watson. Intei'sai was too far off the beaten path – and the planned asari-human trade route Pinnacle was supposed to protect ended up never happening, instead being routed through Vinsona and around Terra Nova way. With the exception of a few, most of the asari pulled up stakes – and the funding for the colony dried up."

Inman sighed. "We ended up selling off the rights to the system back to the SA, and in return for them basing Pinnacle here we signed the full Class I charter and started paying taxes. The SA didn't give us too much support, but with a damned battle-station in the sky and nothing to really loot we never had any problems with pirates or the like. When Ahern got exiled to Pinnacle after he decided not to become a Spectre and pissed off everyone at the time, he bought out Matriarch Intei's old place and modified it for human habitation."

She nodded. "Sounds like a pretty safe arrangement. Your secretary mentioned things were 'tight'..."

Inman spread his hands. "Intei'sai's not a well-heeled colony, ma'am. To be blunt, we remain damn near broke all the time. We're so far out it costs a fair bit to ship what we make and grow back to any kind of market, so profits are thin." He sighed. "That means low tax revenue and no quick way to make it to Class II status where we could at least get revenues from the mining I know the SA is doing in the asteroid belts."

She nodded slowly. "What does Intei'sai export, exactly?"

He rubbed a finger across a scuffed spot on his desk. "We export a bit of corn, beef and some bauxite we mine in the mountains, and knickknacks from the artsy types and whatnot that settled over the years, but for the most part it's just another stage one world. It's quiet, people tend to not be very nosy, and we're far enough out of the way of just about everything that no one bothers us."

Shepard nodded again. "Sounds … peaceful."

Inman nodded. "It is. Or was. Now you come along. The Ministry of Development sent us a data packet late last night regarding you. It instructed me, as Mayor, that I was immediately to cede an area of no less than one hundred square miles to you. No more than 10% of this area can be developed land. Additionally, you are now the Baroness of Intei'sai, which means that technically you speak for us in the Court of Lords when it assembles."

The mayor tapped a data-padd on his desk, frowning. "In the winter, someone from the Ministry will come by and have us decide if you are going to just select a Senator or if you want us to vote on who to send. Other than that, it seems like it's now your responsibility to help us develop our world. And technically, I am to defer to any of your commands and wishes."

Shepard groaned. "Great. Yet _more_ noble bullshit no one told me about."

Inman smiled thinly. "I'm not sure if I'm happy or pissed myself. We've ran ourselves pretty well all this time without any oversight. On the other hand, having a noble actually speak for us might clear up the Ministry's hands-off, no-cash-for-you policies." He shrugged. "My main worry, of course, is that the hard work we've put into this colony for so long could be at risk."

Shepard immediately held up a hand, spearing him with a hard look. "Mayor, I can safely say I have no damned interest in running this colony. You've obviously done well here, and that is not about to change. You talk straight, and I really like that, so I will do the same."

She exhaled. "A little more than a year ago, I was not even close to the same person I am now. But it's been a hard year. I don't have many of the skills I would need to even know where to start in helping out with the colony. I have heavy military commitments, and to be honest without telling you details, there's a good chance I'll get my head blown off sooner or later."

She gestured to Liara. "Liara is not familiar with human culture at all, and neither of us is a people person. I have no goddamned idea what kind of mess they've spread about me recently in the media, but I tried to make it clear in my interview with Wong that I'm just a soldier. The fact they draped all these awards, fancy ass titles and knighthoods over me changes nothing."

She sat back. "I saw on the drive in that you have a beautiful home here. Your people worked hard, and you've got a place I would like to live in. I don't want anyone fucking deferring to me, though, or bowing and scraping or any of that shit, much less having me run the place."

Liara, next to Shepard, nodded firmly. "We have both been through a tremendous amount of upheaval in our lives, and we really have no where else to go, Mayor Inman. Shepard selected your world hoping for isolation and privacy, and perhaps a few days of peace, before we are again flung headlong into danger and pain. Neither she nor I, despite our elevated status, have any intention of changing the spirit of your home."

Inman grunted. "That's well and good – but it doesn't change the fact now that you are here, there will be people showing up hoping to get in good with you or try to find a way to make a buck."

Shepard snorted. "Mayor, I can see you've been around the block a few times. You don't look like a soft man, or one who lets anyone walk over him." She smiled. "You seem to be saying this world is technically under my authority, yes?"

He nodded, and she shrugged. "Then the only order I give you is if anyone shows up looking to do anything but help this community, you have my explicit permission to drag them behind one of the pillboxes out front and beat them like a rug, and my pardon of any crimes if you happen to accidentally smash someone's media camera or other crap."

Inman was silent for a long moment before puffing on the cigar and giving a bark of laughter. "Fair enough, ma'am." He exhaled. "I'll say this. We all have to deal with changing circumstances. Shit blows up and plans fall through. Pain and hardships comes to us all. We can face it on our feet, or on our fucking knees. Begging."

He met her gaze. "I ain't much for begging. I want my world to be successful. I don't want it overrun by the kind of slime that turned Bekenstein into a shithole. If you work with me to keep Intei'sai the way it should be, we'll get along fine. If you want privacy, you'll get it if I have to kick the shit in of any reporter who shows up myself."

His voice hardened. "But if you turn out bad, I don't give a shit if you're baroness, Spectre, N7, Butcher or _God_ – I will fucking end you myself or die trying. We clear, ma'am?"

Shepard tilted her head, and then a small, almost shy smile twisted her lips. "Someone with a fucking spine. That's good. I don't care how you run this place – you seem to be doing a good job. If you keep my private life private, and make sure that no matter what happens to me that Liara is always welcome and safe here, I'd die to protect this world. But if you cross me and sell me out to the media you won't like me when I'm angry."

He nodded. "Devil's in the details."

She nodded at the phrase, a Marine swear, and spoke in a hard voice. "Well, fuck him up the ass." She spat into her palm and held it out, and he did the same, slamming them together in a rough handshake.

Liara observed this with a look of bewilderment, and became more confused when the tension in Inman's frame left him entirely. "I am not entirely sure I understand what this was all about, Sara."

Shepard sighed. "Old marine tradition. The mayor is concerned that his home stays his home, and I am worried about privacy. So we basically made a deal between marines to each hold up our word."

Inman folded his fingers together again, cigar in his mouth. "The ministerial packet was pretty forceful on insisting a great deal of the control of the colony be handed over to you and your 'staff'. That's what had me worried. I don't mean to be insulting, but nothing in your background suggested you knew much about running a colony."

Shepard snorted. "My staff is a shy ensign with a crush on both me and Liara and a sneaky, underhanded Commissar, neither of who are coming here. If I need a staff, you can figure it out and handle all the details, Mayor. I haven't the time or interest in running a colony."

Inman nodded. "Right. The last thing we need to discuss is the land issue, then." He stood, walking over to the huge map on one wall, and tapped a section of it, which zoomed in. "Ahern's place is up here, on Blade Hill, about fifty miles from here and just south of that old Prothean ruin."

Liara's eyes lit up. "There are Prothean ruins on this world?"

Inman shrugged. "Yeah, but the scientists looked 'em over years back – they were something called Second Era – no guns, no power sources, so they didn't find anything useful."

Liara huffed. "Typical. Given that the Second Era was relatively peaceful, I am not surprised they ignored such ruins." She paused, turning to Sara. "Do you think...?"

Shepard shrugged, guessing what Liara wanted. "Any of this area around our new home developed?"

Inman shrugged back. "Shit no. Real pretty, but empty – mostly low hills around Blade Hill, and then fields through the valley leading to the ruins. Intei was a weird old girl, she liked her damned privacy, and so did Ahern."

She nodded. "I'd like you to draw me up an area that incorporates the ruins, then – Liara has an avowed interest in Prothean ruins. I'm not familiar with the land so I trust you to do what's best for the colony and not rip me off."

Inman chuckled. "Simple enough." He tapped the map a few times, bringing up glowing blue lines on the gold background. "A simple box – the house at one corner, ruins at the far corner. Gives you hills, plains, a bit of the river – room to farm, do bore-mining, or build up whatever."

Shepard nodded. "That sounds...fair."

Inman spent another twenty minutes drawing up land deeds – himself, as he had no real staff – while telling them about the planet. Barely thirty thousand people lived on Intei'sai, and half were farmers growing hydroponic crops or livestock. Another twenty percent were growing specialty goods – tobacco, splices of alien plants or fruits. Fishermen, loggers and miners made up another twenty percent. The remaining ten percent was a mix of artistic types, a handful of asari living near the sea, and a few hundred retired Marines that acted as the colony police, security force and firefighters.

The planet had no assigned defense bases or the like due to presence of Pinnacle, but they had a small unit of Marine engineers to work on the few projects the SA would pay for, like the dam being built near Haddick.

When they were done, Inman put out his second cigar and gestured for them to follow him, leading them back out front. He glared at Lieutenant Alvai, who was chatting up a pretty young woman near his truck.

"Lieutenant. Get the ladies bags from your truck and drop 'em in my shuttle, now. Handtruck is out by the generator, we'll be in the bay."

Alvai scrambled off, and Inman shook his head. "That kid's a menace."

Shepard quirked her lips. "Ladies man, I take it?"

He lead them around the side of the colonial building, through a pair of automated doors into a low corridor lined with older computers and shelves of repair kits. "Yeah, which pisses me off since he's smart enough to be more than a PR flack. Still, he's useful in keeping everything calm."

He pushed through another set of doors, and slapped a control on the wall of the large room they entered into, which Shepard belatedly realized was the converted cargo bay of the old colony ship turned into a hangar.

Six old-style shuttles and two cargo-haulers were neatly parked on blacktop, red and white painted lines rather than haptic warning signs showing the launch paths. "You can usually just drive up to Ahern's place, but right now the road is washed out due to the flooding from the summer rains. Until those damned engineers get off their butts and get the dam built, the only way to and from the house is shuttle. We mostly only use one or two of these shuttles – I'll leave one behind for your use if you can fly one."

Shepard nodded, as Lieutenant Alvai came in with their luggage on a roll-cart. Ten minutes later they were in the air, Shepard carefully following Inman as he flew up through the highlands towards the north.

Inman's voice rang across the commlink. "Be careful flying – trade winds once you get close to Blade Hill are a bitch. Still, the shuttles are usually stable enough."

She nodded. "Were you a marine pilot, Mayor?"

He laughed. "Hell no. Did time in the Fifth RRU and the Eleventh RIU before being tapped for N. Washed out at N1 on the survival course, but got picked up by the Corsairs as a space-side BDO. Ended up with them for a decade before I got my arm blown off by batarian SIU. Picked up the flying in the Corsairs."

She winced. The batarian Special Intervention Unit was their special forces, nasty customers in a fight. "I'm guessing your silver was not from the SA, then?"

His voice was filled with disgust. "No. Pensioned off. Did some merc work for the Blue Suns after that, they paid for the arm. Quit when Massani got forced out by that evil fucker Santiago, the Suns went to shit after that. Got picked up as security adviser for this colony when they were talking about shutting down Pinnacle – ended up staying and helping out. When the old mayor passed on, I got the job."

The misty ground-cover began burning off as they entered the highlands, and Liara gasped as she saw the house ahead. It was a low, curved structure that snuggled against the base of a tall, broken off hill with a shape like a combat knife. Shallow porticoes shaded the walls and the roof was covered in greenery, while a tributary of the nearby river was fed by a splashing waterfall that had worn through the rock over the years.

The surface of the house was composed of delicately carved crystalline waves, in a chaotic pattern broken up by spars of darker material slanting downwards. As they got closer, she saw the mountainside itself below the house was also worked, with stylized waves and channels for the spillover of the waterfall to cascade further down, sending up sprays of mist.

Despite herself, Shepard was impressed – this wasn't some boxy pre-fab unit but a stylish looking house of fair size. "Bigger than I thought."

Inman lead them down, parking the shuttles on a neat square of armaplast decking set into a metallic landing pod anchored securely to the cliff. She stepped out of the shuttle, grabbing her bags, Liara doing the same.

The house was dead ahead, a narrow black slate walkway cut into shallow steps leading up to the front door. Faint glow-lights illuminated path, each one set into small carvings of slender hands. Shepard and Liara looked around as Inman got out of his own shuttle and smiled. "Ahern gave me a program to recode the security to whoever bought the place. Hang on a second."

A few seconds after Inman tapped his omni, the front doors opened, and three customized AESIR mechs walked out. Each one was painted flat black with pale scarlet trim, their eye optics colored red instead of blue, and had been fitted with additional armor. Each one carried a turian Phaeston assault rifle, and they formed a neat line in front of Inman.

The one in the middle spoke. "House VI is online. Security nominal. Welcome, Mayor Inman. Security code recognized."

Inman pointed to Shepard. "Reset default ownership to this human female, Shepard, Sara. Noble. Secondary ownership to this asari, Liara T'Soni, noble."

The robots twitched in unison. "Downloading manifest and identification package." A moment later, the three robot's optics shifted from red to blue. "Welcome home, Baroness, Lady Liara."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Wonderful. VI, status of the house?"

"House is secure. Comms link is secure. Tightbeam laser connection to Pinnacle is secure. Aircars secure. Aircar port contains cargo. Basement secure. Landing pad contains two unrecognized shuttles."

Inman turned to face them. "Like I said, I'll let you have one of the shuttles, as long as you keep me clued in on what the hell the SA is going to do to us. Figure it's a fair trade."

She nodded. "Thank you, Mayor. I enjoyed talking with you – but it's been a very long trip with some unexpected stops and I think Liara and I both need rest."

He smiled, and nodded, tapping his omni-tool "Sent you my TTG and OT links. I'll see you around, ma'am."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Ahern's house – now their house – was a mixture of exciting and sad for Shepard and Liara. It was exciting in that it was to be their home, and sad for the emptiness of it all, leaving them only their imaginations as to what it must have looked like furnished.

The place had been emptied of almost all furniture, magnifying the size of the rooms. The front room was almost fifty feet wide, a shallow crescent with a door at either end and a pair of double doors in the middle, opposite the front door. The ceiling was arched and carved with what Liara said were stylized images of the Thessian night sky and its constellations.

The walls were a very light pale silvery color, with inset light fixtures that glowed in soft whites and yellows. The floors were wooden, a dark black wood that absorbed the light and was springy to walk on.

The left door lead to a narrow corridor ending in the bedroom. A door to the right and left both lead to walk in closets, the leftmost one also having a set of gun racks and an armor rack.

The bedroom itself was cut into the mountainside and looked out over the valley below through wide, oval windows. The ceiling was high, curved in a shape like that of a seashell, angling down towards the back in patterns akin to the patterns of flesh on an asari neck. A wall divided the room, behind the wall lay a walk in shower and sinks curved around a bathing basin. A pair of mirrors flanked a cabinet to the south and the north was dominated by a small fireplace made of dark black stone.

The other corridor had two bedrooms, one on either side, smaller than the master bedroom, and a single bathroom at the end that was lenticular in shape.

The double doors inwards opened onto a wide room, oval in shape. A kitchen was off to one side, on the right edge of the room, while the left side opened into an alcove with another wide window looking out, reached by a set of short steps. Communications screens and computers were set into the walls here, along with a secure laser-tightbeam link and shelving.

The room had three doors leading off from it – one lead to a garage, with two empty slots and a modern aircar parked, as well as charging stations for the security bots and a tool locker next to that. Sitting outside the garage were seven large crates, marked from Arcturus.

Shepard raised her eyebrow at that. "I thought we only sent one crate." She approached them slowly, and found the other six had markings indicating they had been shipped by Jiong. Opening the first one revealed a long table and a set of four chairs, and Shepard sighed.

"Well, here's furniture. That's probably something we should have thought of before just showing up here, huh?"

Liara laughed. "It seems Jiong thinks of everything, does it not?"

Liara and Shepard continued glancing over the house, while Shepard instructed the three security bots to begin unpacking the crates.

The middle room was the omni-foundry, complete with a very nice omni-foundry setup and tanks for omnigel. Shelving and racks for weapons or armor were built into the walls, along with a narrow firing range with a haptic target at the far end cut into the far wall.

The final room could have been anything, it was large, square and empty. A door lead off of it to a narrow circular spiral staircase, which descended to a basement with a water filtration system and a small power generation unit. A series of shelves sat here as well, still packed with long-duration MREs, bottled water, and basic medical supplies.

Shepard laughed. "I see he was prepared for anything."

Shepard and Liara spent a good three hours unpacking and placing furniture, using a mix of biotics and the security bots to move things. Jiong had included a double bed, a pair of desks, two comfortable swivel chairs like the ones in Shepard's office, a long eating table with four chairs, an omni-printing unit for minor household goods (along with a large container of omnigel), and a pair of couches. The omni-printer had designs for basic things – bed-sheets, towels, plates, utensils, and office supplies.

The one crate Shepard had shipped included the rest of Liara's clothing, most of her research materials, the medical bot Dallas had obtained for them, and a very large stack of datapads – mostly things Shepard had ordered for online classes in human psychology and communications, which she decided she still needed work on.

After unpacking and placing things, the two had fallen asleep on the bed, exhausted, and Shepard awoke the next day from a dreamless sleep to find herself entangled with Liara. It was very strange for Shepard to realize she had nothing urgent to do, and she ended up sleeping in late for only the second time in her life, listening to music and watching the sun slowly come up.

Much of the day was spent with Liara buying up food to stock the kitchen, hygienic necessities that they couldn't omni-print, and talking with Inman to make sure utilities would keep functioning. Shepard, bringing along two of the bots, took the time to buy a few more pieces of furniture – some cabinets and dressers, a big haptic entertainment package, some rugs, a few lamps and fixtures, and some chairs. The local artisans in Haddick made furniture as it turned out, and one of them, an older retired marine sergeant, ran a delivery service.

By the end of their second day, they had finished with the basics of furnishing the house. Shepard had no idea of anything even approaching home decoration, so she went with simple things – dark woods and black cloth for everything. Liara added touches here and there, although she had little more experience in such things.

Shepard decided, in lieu of needing the two extra bedrooms, to convert one of them to other purposes. Liara took one and made it into a little office, putting in a desk and racks for her various books and papers. One of the desks went in there, and Liara laid out the tablets they'd found in the box of Benezia on the shelving.

The other bedroom Shepard decided would stay as is in case of visitors.

The main entry room they mostly left bare, save for some lamps and a rug, but Shepard wasted no time setting up the small foyer in the central room as her own office since it already had the communications equipment she'd need. By the end of their second day on Intei'sai, they'd finished putting in everything they'd need to live comfortably, and sat bonelessly on the couch in front of the entertainment system, watching the nightly news.

Shepard had found, to her delight, that the artisans of Haddick made excellent wines, and had picked some up while in town. She sipped her glass, before she lit one of Jack Harper's expensive cigarettes, smiling faintly as she watched the GASCAR listings for the next rally, a fundraiser for Eden Prime.

Liara had leaned back on the couch, draping her legs across Shepard's lap, and was simply watching her. "You are quiet, Sara." She set down her own empty wineglass with a careful movement.

Shepard shrugged. "I'm learning what it means to … relax, I guess." She leaned her head back and laughed quietly, and Liara shifted her position on the couch to lean against her.

"What do you mean?"

Shepard's blue eyes found Liara's, and she smiled. "I don't even know a word for it. All my life has been running and fleeing and struggle. Now, I have a couple of weeks of nothing to do but sit around in luxury and … think? Relax? God, the most difficult thing I did today was figure out how to plug in the entertainment package."

She inhaled on the cigarette. "It isn't easy to switch my mind over, I guess."

Liara nodded. "I understand, but you have to realize that this is an opportunity for us to find, if not normalcy, at least stability." She deftly plucked the cigarette out of Shepard's fingers to take a puff. "I do not think we have not deserved a period of time to rest and relax. To figure out where we are going with our lives, the two of us."

She laid her head on Shepard's shoulder. "I worry at times, Sara, that I do not know how to live a normal life any more than you do. Susan says that I have a tendency to fixate on something to an unhealthy degree. She said my Prothean research at the cost of my own health and social standing at times was no more normal than my fixation on you."

Shepard snorted, taking the cigarette back. "D'Alte gets on my goddamned nerves, marazul. I get where she's coming from, but god damn, I feel like quoting fucking Dragunov – I think I can do better than someone who burns people to death and can't even say 'I love you' when I need advice on how to handle my personal relationships. Jiong, at least, doesn't harp on me about that."

She leaned her head back. "I have no fucking idea where we're going with this, Liara. Do you?"

Liara's expression had shifted to impish amusement as she took Shepard's wine glass and set it down."The bedroom. I find myself unwilling to wrestle with such heavy emotional questions when I could be simply enjoying myself."

**O-ATTWN-O**

The third day on Intei'sai had started off well enough. The medical bot that Dallas illegally obtained was very efficient in patching up whatever minor injuries they accumulated in their activities, although it couldn't do anything for the soreness.

Bonding with Liara had pretty much consumed Shepard, to the point where she found herself almost unable to stop, nearly crying when they had no energy to go on and the bond had faltered back to normal levels out of sheer exhaustion, leaving behind a pair of bruised, battered women. Half her impulse upon waking up had simply been to keep going.

It was an impulse she pushed down, with some difficulty. In the shower, letting the warm water soothe bruises and muscle soreness, she thought about the concerns Liara had about the strength of their bond, and once both of them had showered and were eating in the kitchen, asked Liara about that.

The young asari sighed. "As I told you on the Citadel, Sara – maidens rarely make or form even strong melds, much less bonds." She made a curious gesture with her hands, light streaming in from the window of the main room casting her in a faint aura. "Bonding is not something taken lightly by my people, not just because it shares the souls of two lovers, but because it is fraught with danger."

Liara adjusted her position in her chair, nibbling at the salad she'd made. "It is more than the psychological issues involved with two minds linked to one another. I fear I have not taken very good care of 'us' in terms of the sort of things I should be doing to make sure we do not develop issues with the bond."

Shepard blinked. "That...doesn't actually tell me much, Li. What dangers, what issues?"

Liara wiped her mouth, rubbing her eyes with her free hand. "Sara, to be honest – I do not know. Much of this information is usually something a mother shares with her child as she nears the usual age to enter the matron stages of life. My aithntar told me some things to be aware of, signs that we were already showing symptoms of bond imprinting." Liara sighed. "But for the most part all I have is vague warnings."

Shepard ate a piece of fruit. "Can't we just look it up on the extranet or something? Talk to Dr. Sedanya?"

Liara's mouth formed a small, tight frown. "It is not something we tend to talk about publicly. While there is some information, much of it will deal with the things encountered by more mature asari in bonds." She paused, sighing. "And the doctor will be of little help. Like all of the clans, I fear Dr. Sedanya is not going to be objective when informing me of the issues. She is a traditionalist, and there is very little traditional in our relationship, Sara. Nor is it … well, normal, for asari to enthuse in pain, at least not to the level I currently have become accustomed to."

Shepard winced. "Yeah, well. That wasn't the intention..."

Liara shrugged. "And I have said before – I do not mind. I think, if anything else, suppressing your impulses in that regard is unhealthy for you, and given how closely we have bonded, you should understand by now – it is not a thing I fear or see as abnormal." She ate another bite of salad, and an almost Shepard-like smirk crossed her features. "Besides, I have no intention of stopping. It is far too enjoyable."

Shepard let herself smile at that. "Is that so?"

Liara put down her fork and gave Shepard a serious look. "While I am not given to the sort of speech you usually use, Sara … sometimes I think your bluntness and profanity is perhaps the best approach."

She exhaled. "We survived something I did not think we would. I am married to the person who saved my life, and living in a home far away from the hatreds, sneering contempt and struggles of my past life. We are facing possible extinction in Athame only knows how long from the Reapers, not to mention whatever the President will task you with."

Liara folded her arms. "In that regard, I intend to relax and enjoy myself. That means, among other things, I intend for you to relax and enjoy yourself as well. And if that means we end up fucking until we can neither walk nor see, then I am not going to rein you in." Her voice gentled. "If I had a problem with it, Sara … would I not say so? Would you not feel that? Do you think I would put up with it for the sake of being with you?"

Shepard swallowed. "It's not something I let myself indulge in – you know that." She ran her fingers through her hair. "I used to think it was something wrong with me, something busted in my head from what … what happened to me when I was younger."

She looked down. "I wince every time you have to see the scars on me, where someone marked me – "

Liara gently leaned over and kissed her. "I do not think any part of you is ugly. I do not think anything one finds pleasuring is bad. And I am not going to let you think of yourself as flawed or abnormal. You are hardly the only person who feels these things or acts this way, Sara – I have done research on human sexuality."

She made a point of meeting Shepard's gaze evenly. "We are going to enjoy ourselves – and not worry about consequences, or difficulties, or anything else, until it is time to leave and go back to your duty and mine." She silenced Shepard's protest with a kiss, and then another, and then breakfast was abandoned.

**O-ATTWN-O**

After getting cleaned up from that little episode, and having the medical bot do its work on their now somewhat worn out bodies, Liara ended up taking a nap. Shepard, too keyed up to sleep, instead decided to do something she'd never had a chance to do before, and with a slightly sheepish expression, turned on the bathing pool with its jets to relax.

She had just settled in and was trying very hard not to moan in pleasure at the massaging action of the water when her omni-tool chimed.

With a long-suffering sigh, she cut down the jets, and picked up the bracelet and tapped it. "Yeah?"

The exotic accent of Ensign Traynor came across, speaking softly. "Major-Commander?"

Shepard sat up slightly, wincing at the lingering soreness in her back. "Yes, Ensign. I presume everything is alright back at Arcturus? You are settled in to the battle group offices?"

Traynor's voice perked up slightly. "Yes, ma'am. Everybody is still on leave – nothing much is happening. The commissar told me to see if I could get a hold of you, and that if you were available he needed to speak with you urgently."

Shepard sighed, that didn't sound good. "Understood. This comms address is for my home on Intei'sai – contact me if you need me."

She clicked off, putting in Jiong's TTG code. It only took the commissar a few seconds to answer. "Major?"

She leaned back in bathing pool, letting the warm water wash over her body. "Yeah, it's me. We're on Intei'sai. Thank you for sending the furniture – I haven't ever had a place to live before, so I pretty much didn't even think about that."

Jiong chuckled. "Well, lessons learned, I suppose. The thought evaded me as well – I fear that was your XO Pressly's clever suggestion."

She chuckled. "God, he thinks of everything."

Jiong's voice sounded almost weary. "Well that he does – I have had an extremely trying few days and would not have thought of such, and you would be sleeping on a hard floor. In any event, I trust you had no difficulties reaching your new home?"

She shrugged. "None except a nervous mayor...and the trip here was a touch weird, tell you about it later. Traynor said you needed to talk?"

Jiong sighed, his voice sounding upset and troubled. "Yes, there was a major security breach at the Citadel last night. The AI we recovered on Ilos, Vigil, is missing."

Shepard sat up straight in the tub, splashing a bit. "Missing? How in the actual fuck does a goddamned Inusannon AI go missing? What the fuck are those Citadel clowns doing?"

Jiong's voice was low and somewhat angry. "A very good question, and one that C-SEC has not been able to answer. The device was stored in the most secure vaults deep below the Citadel proper. All video footage shows no one going in or out except the authorized guard. The guard did his rounds, then walked outside and in full view of a dozen witnesses, screamed out Saren's name and shot himself in the head. Due to his location – directly above the energy containment cells for the hull – the body was unrecoverable, but it is assumed he was indoctrinated."

Shepard grimaced. "And no sign of Vigil at all?"

"None, Major. It is conjectured that the turian in question had some kind of device or program that destroyed or corrupted the AI and then killed himself to avoid it being analyzed, but we cannot be sure. The Council is taking it calmly – according to Udina, Vigil was being less than helpful – and knowledge of its existence was not widely spread.."

Shepard shook her head. "Even so...fuck! That was my one hard piece of evidence – it could have been used to help us figure out what to do about the Reapers." She sighed. "Indoctrinated agents. Fucking wonderful. What else?"

Jiong sighed. "Roughly four hours ago, there was an assassination attempt on President Windsor. The Secret Service were able to take down the assassin, but his niece Elizabeth was shot and severely injured. The assassin detonated a cortex bomb, blowing his head off before he could be taken into custody – the Commissariat and AIS are working together on leads, but nothing so far."

Shepard could only imagine the chaos on Earth after such an event, and sighed. "Well, double fuck. Suicide-assassins, that doesn't sound ominous at all. I don't suppose there's any good fucking news?"

The bitterly wry laugh that answered her through the omni-tool was Jiong's only response, and she closed her eyes. "Anything else going on that I need to know about? Media kicked down the office doors yet?"

Jiong's voice was apologetic. "I have a large stack of requests for interviews. Mostly media requests, which I have denied, but one or two invitations from various powerful people – for example, the Corporate Court wishes a moment of your time."

She shorted. "Wonderful. Anything else?"

His voice shifted to bored sounding. "Rumors are rampant about where you have run off to for your honeymoon – and according to one media report, a band of Eclipse sisters claimed you were headed towards Omega, while paparazzi claim to have seen you on Ilium, Noveria, and Terra Nova."

She snorted. "We had an interesting run in on our way here with an asari who may have planted that Eclipse story, and it's why the trip was odd. Does the name Mirala or Morinth mean anything to you?"

Jiong was silent a long time before speaking. "I had to consult my omni. 'Morinth' is the code name of an asari operative used by … certain elements of the Commissariat for extreme sanction. Make that very extreme sanction."

Shepard hissed. "She's an ardat-yakshi!"

Jiong's voice was tight."Well, no. Technically, she's an ardat-rekshi, or 'Daywind' – one of the ardat-yakshi subtypes who does not always kill upon melding. There are those in the Commissariat who have been instructed to handle her, and she has provided very good intelligence to us in the past. With one exception, the Justicar Order is … ambivalent about her. At least count, she's put down over a thousand very dangerous criminals."

Shepard's eyes widened. "She's killed a thousand people by sleeping with them?"

Jiong coughed. "No. Some of her kills are more conventional. How exactly did you run across her?"

Shepard related most of the conversation to him, but not the part about why they were there in the first place, or what they found, and when she was done Jiong merely sighed again. "I will notify my supervisors that she has already moved on – I don't know what she was playing at in human space, but it was probably related to the death of Jinron Galesi a few days ago."

Shepard tilted her head. "The big-time slaver asshole? He died?"

"Yes, autopsy said massive brain aneurysm. There's a picture of him in GMZ with an asari woman who looks much like Morinth."

She chuckled. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Good fucking riddance."

Jiong's voice was flat. "Yes, quite. If there is nothing else, Baroness... I will leave you to the arduous task of relaxation. Comm me if you have any needs."

She clicked off after saying farewell, tossing the omni-tool across the room in disgust. Vigil just vanishing without a trace sounded like a stunt the Broker would pull, but the indoctrinated turian being involved made it sound like this Ylana bitch needed to get a bullet in the brain, pronto.

Yet something didn't ring quite right in her head about the situation. Vigil was definitely not impressed with the technology he saw in use – how, exactly, could he have been taken down?

Sighing and stepping out of the bath to towel off, she decided to eat, wondering what Liara would want.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The next week progressed pretty much along the same lines, and Shepard and Liara soon fell into a schedule. In the mornings, they'd eat and split up to do their own little hobbies. Shepard bought a series of shelves for the entry room, and a collection of various starship models, spending most of every other morning fiddling with these. On the days she didn't she would sit outside on the portico, reading the datapads on human behavior, psychology, and the required duties and responsibilities of the nobility.

Given that she had only her military salary, she was hardly wealthy enough to do much in the way of charity. As she understood it, she'd need to hire a steward or something like that to help her develop her Estate, build some kind of money-generating properties on it – mines, farms, whatever – and then use the money to help develop the colony.

The only think she could think of was coming up with designs for weapons and selling them to various companies in the short term – she decided to talk to Jiong about that idea later in the week.

Liara, in the mornings, would bury herself in her office, chain-smoking and reading the data-pads from her mother's belongings, putting together a rough timeline of her mother's descent into madness and despair. More things came to light from her review, namely that there was a facility somewhere in the Traverse not far from Omega where Benezia had started a chapter of the Triune, and most likely if not where Ylana was currently at, would at least offer clues.

After lunch, Shepard would spend a few hours in the dojo she'd converted the final, squarish room into, teaching Liara hand to hand or working out. She pushed Liara to stay in shape, making sure the gains picked up at Pinnacle after so much hard work didn't slide back into nothingness. After an hour of two of that, Shepard would usually fiddle around in the omni-foundry, testing various ideas for other weapons, grenades and the like, while Liara would drive out to the Prothean ruins nearby and explore.

More than once she returned, dusty and battered yet grinning, hauling back some chunk of stone, a piece of obscure minor technology, or rubbings. The little office Liara had quickly became cluttered with such things, and a few of the more impressive pieces, such as a working Prothean computer of some kind, she set up in the main entryway.

Shepard, able to read and understand Prothean, tagged along sometimes. The site was nothing more, it appeared, than an old astronomical observatory, keeping an eye on the nearby unstable super-giant a few parsecs away in case it went supernova. Liara found stylized star-charts and maps, and the computer system was barely functional but revealed a number of star systems well beyond conventional FTL that the Protheans had apparently explored.

Several, grimly, were garden worlds reduced to wreck and ruin by repeated orbital bombardment – Liara didn't know if it was Reapers who had murdered these worlds, or merely wars. Shepard found the grainy images of such charnel houses haunting.

In the evenings, after dinner, they would sit on the sofa and flip through various haptic programming while talking about whatever crossed their minds. Shepard discovered a guilty pleasure in watching the published minutes of the Council, laughing at Udina's antics as he verbally danced around the increasingly frustrated Tevos and Valern while Sparatus was very nearly snickering the entire time and Thin'Koris interjected with cutting, dry sarcasm.

Liara watched all manner of science programming, but also a great deal of human news and entertainment, trying to learn more about her adopted home. Eventually they would get tired, and sit outside, staring at the night sky and talking before sleeping or making love.

Shepard had expected to get bored quickly with such peace and quiet, and found to her surprise that she didn't, feeling almost resentful it would end. And her worries about the population being wary of her were equally off-target. Several times she ventured into town, to go shopping or just to look around, and found the people there to be mostly quiet, down-to-earth types.

Once she got past their initial reserve, she found them much easier to deal with than she expected. Stories of the Butcher had not really penetrated the community, the little they knew about her was from the most recent news, full of breathless admiration for her battle against Saren.

A farmer, working the land nearest her home, had summed it up best. She'd met him in town, when she was buying more omnigel, and the man was doing the same. He used it to patch up feed tanks and create retaining walls for his crops, and as they waited in line he asked her a few things – how she liked the planet, if she'd seen the last Die Hard movie (the series was up to seventeen), and of course, the GASCAR rankings.

When she'd commented that Intei'sai was peaceful enough she wished she could just stay, the man's lined, tanned face split into a grin. "Well, I figure that's about how most people who come here end up feelin'. Mind our own, we do. Can't do a damned thing about the galaxy goin' to hell in a handbasket – I figure that's up to the people like you, missus."

She arched her eyebrow. "Yeah, well, a lot of people had problems with my past before I came here."

The farmer shrugged, eyeing the line before speaking. "And so? Hell, afore I came here I ran with gangs on Earth, outta Port Sydney. Did a lot of bad shit I regret now." His eyes darkened, and he shook his head. "Got arrested, jailed, and shipped off to a Class I – here. Best damned thing that coulda happened to me. Everyone makes mistakes. Ain't about the things you did wrong, it's about how you plan to make it right. And no matter what you did, I figure savin' the damned Citadel and stoppin' that spike bastard and that blue shoulda gotten you some slack."

She'd thought on his words on her way home that day, wondering. It was easy enough to imagine what it was like to be 'just another person', but she'd long feared that no matter what she did, or where she ended up, people would judge her. After all, the media did, the lunatics who showed up in crowds when her ship came in did, the SA did...

...but as it turned out, some people didn't give a shit about her past at all. It put her in a strangely cheerful, carefree mood, one that stayed with her the rest of her days on Intei'sai, and she never forgot the phrase the old farmer told her – making things right is what mattered.


	26. Chapter 26 : Horrified Understandings

**A/N:** _I'm not 100% satisfied with this chapter, as it's a lot of big hits to absorb in one piece. Spreading it out, however, only delays moving the action along, which is not what I intended, as I'm already over my word budget for this work._

_The reveal of some of the monstrosity the SA is planning should tie together several aspects people have noted and questioned regarding Cerberus, regarding the SA's curious lack of action in stopping piracy, and their cool war with no real mess with the batarians. Some will see it as 'over the top'. Others will think it is ... inappropriate. I will only say that things are not always what they seem, and there is a very wide gap between plans and results. _

_As a nice ominous sidenote, MarsGene is heavily invested in by Henry Lawson. The significance of that will hit you in a bit :D_

* * *

_"The distasteful and unpleasant is often seen as required. History has shown us that it very rarely is, yet leaders are all too often poor students of history." _

_\- Major Preston Kyle, "Reflections of the Lion"_

* * *

Shepard's routine of relaxation was rudely interrupted eight days into her time off, by a comms signal from Mayor Inman.

Her morning had started off as normal. Liara and Shepard had begun a very simple translation primer for Prothean language and script, and after spending hours the night before listing off basic words and transcribing them, Liara was using it to translate known works and make sure the thing was accurate.

Liara had suggested selling it to various parties, since that would bring in more than enough money to help Intei'sai, but the asari was mostly handling that little project on her own, Shepard just doing the translating. They'd spent the morning working on it, and then Liara had finally headed out for her usual digging about after a quick lunch.

Shepard, with nothing else to do, poured herself some wine, lit the last of the Illusive Man's cigarettes, had been fiddling with some weapons designs in the foundry when her omni-tool had blipped, the mayor's voice breaking her concentration.

"Morning, Baroness." Inman's hard voice had a hint of amusement in it.

She sighed. "Morning, mayor. Can't convince you to drop the title?"

Inman had laughed. "Naw. I keep thinking about you going into the Court of Lords and cold-cocking some son-of-a-bitch who gets mouthy and it's all I can do not to start giggling. Anyway, we got a little situation you need to address."

She arched an eyebrow. "Me?"

His voice turned grim. "Just because you have enough common sense to not want to mess with things doesn't mean the process changes, ma'am. Any large business proposals have to go through you." He paused.

"Had a volus come in to do some business with the little bank we got on the planet – some big-shot wants to sell things to Pinnacle and is going to buy up space for quite a few warehouses. Problem is, they're talking about a lot of land – nearly fifty square miles, and building a full service starport. That means at least a few hundred immigrants, more infrastructure, you name it. Volus is playing catty with me about the costs. I don't figure you have much experience with this, but having you at the negotiations would help."

Shepard sighed. "I'll see what I can do. Which I warn you, probably isn't _much_."

Inman continued. "There's one more thing. The volus has the scariest goddamned bodyguard I've ever seen, some cybered-up chick – she knows you are here, and told me to tell you 'Bea Shields is in town and wants to talk.'

Shepard immediately tensed. "I see. Mayor Inman – be extremely careful around her. There's a good chance she's working for the Shadow Broker, who had a hand in a recent assassination attempt on me."

Inman growled. "I'll watch her real close. Hustle up some boys, too, to watch my back. Sooner you get here, the better."

Shepard had gotten dressed – black rip-stop pants with heavy boots, a dark gray long-sleeved shirt and a black jacket that came to mid-thigh – and stashed the powerful hold-out pistol she'd created in the omni-foundry as one of her first projects in her boot. She slotted her bio-amp again, feeling biotic energy crawl over her, and after sending an omni-tool message to Liara to let her know where she was off to, flew into town in the shuttle.

The trip was quick, Shepard not paying much attention to the landscapes around her, instead worrying why Bea would be here, and how she even knew to find Shepard here. The immediate answer – the Broker – didn't make her feel any more comfortable, and she used her omni to remotely arm the security mechs in the house and have them find and escort Liara back.

She touched down at the city hall, the cargo bay doors already opened for her. A pair of hard looking men in plain black short-sleeve fatigues with slung Avenger rifles were leaning against the far wall, straightening as she got out of the shuttle. The left-most one, an older man with an Alliance 'A' tattoo on his forearm, gave her a solemn nod.

"M'lady. Mayor sent us along in case this broad Shields gets an attitude problem. Said she might be dangerous."

Shepard snorted. "He thinks_ I_ need backup? Relax, gentlemen. She's an old teammate. All the same...if shit goes bad, get the Mayor and Laura out of here, will you?"

They nodded, following her as she went inside. Laura was in the main room of the offices, and directed Shepard to the 'meeting room', an area reached by passing through hydroponics.

The hydroponic area was a wide space, full of jury-rigged tables under grow lamps, mostly dedicated to basic foodstuff production. Haptic screens on the walls monitored grow levels, water amounts, and soil chemistry, casting multicolored lights and shadows over the plants. A wide rubberized path bisected it, leading to heavy double doors opening into the aforementioned meeting room.

It was yet another wide space, probably converted from one of the colony ship's berthing areas. A large haptic screen connected to several computers dominated the far wall, cluttered with financial projections and contract language. A semicircular ring of couches – reupholstered acceleration couches, she noted with amusement – surrounded an elevated central platform with a podium.

At least three hundred people could fit into the room, and right now it was mostly empty. Inman sat on one couch, along with an old farmer she vaguely recognized as the largest landowner on the planet.

On a second nearby couch were two men in somber suits from the on-planet branch of the Bank of Eldfell-Manswell. She'd only spoke to one of them a few times, depositing some of her cash with them and setting up a bank account for the first time in her life.

Across from them stood a squat volus in a black and scarlet encounter suit, and finally, lounging on the couch next to the volus was Bea Shields, dressed in an expensive looking black bodysuit with a silver coat and her hair tied back in a ponytail.

Inman looked up, then stood as Shepard entered. "Welcome, Baroness." He gave a bow, as did the farmer next to him. The bankers did the same, smiling uncertainly. She noted with amusement even the bankers were armed with pistols.

The volus placed his hands together, a sign of volus respect. "Greetings, noble Earth-Clan. I am Sendar Von, a representative *shrrk* of the Barla Von Financial Network."

Beatrice merely snorted, not bothering to get up. "Sup, She-bitch."

The room fell silent as everyone looked at her aghast, only to do a double take when Shepard laughed. "Hey, Bea." She paused, amused. "She's an old team-mate. And I told you people to drop the baroness crap."

The leftmost banker raised both eyebrows. "If you so wish, although it is rather perturbatory to dismiss honors given you by the President, no?"

She walked to the center of the room, folding her arms and letting her weight fall back onto one leg. "Maybe. So is assigning myself airs and demanding everybody around me bow like we're in the Middle Ages. So, what's going on?"

The bankers glanced at each other before the right-most one, a mousy looking man in his fifties with flat, limp gray hair, vaguely Hispanic features, and washed out pale brown eyes, spoke.

Shepard thus endured a good fifty minutes of her life lost to squabbling between the bankers, the colony, and the volus. From what she understood, the problem was taxation costs cutting into profits for both sides, and Inman wanted her to authorize him to give the company a tax break.

She pulled him aside for a quick discussion. "Mayor, my knowledge of financial transactions is about on par with my knowledge of bio-medical research, which is to say, shit."

He nodded. "Figured that, like I said. But you gotta learn sometime, ma'am. And honestly, I wanted you here to shake that fucking volus up a bit – he's a lot more polite than he was this morning, trust me."

She shrugged. "Tell me what you want done, then, and let's do it. This financial babble is killing me."

It took another hour to hammer out all the details, but at the end of the conversation, the colony had not only gotten a new warehousing project and a new full-service starport but the company would invest in a full-line fusion reactor to power it and the colony itself. In return, although it would cost them in the short term, they didn't pay any taxes for the first five years, and the bankers got to apply most of the leftover profits from the fees the colony did charge to the colony debts.

After three years, given how fast the project would grow, the colony would theoretically start raking in the cash. After five, that would only increase. She thanked everyone for being agreeable, before giving Shields a sharp look.

"Mayor, you got a private room around here I can use? I need to talk with my old team mate."

Inman gestured to the room to one side. "Sure thing."

Shields glanced at her volus charge. "I will be returning to the ship shortly, Mr. Von. Await me there."

The volus waddled off, and the two men from Inman gave her a querying look. "I'll be fine, boys. Make sure our guest is safe, not that there's much danger on this planet."

One of the men snorted. "Lieutenant Alvai's driving, maybe."

Shields shook her head. "Ha, can't be any worse than how the hell Shepard drives, sometime."

They entered the small room, some kind of bulk storage area, filled with racks of datapads, boxes of paper, and other junk. Shepard sat down on a heavy crate, looking up at Bea. "I hear you wanted to talk." Her voice was wary.

The black haired woman nodded, sitting down on a different crate across from her, the black-tinted cybernetics at her scalp gleaming faintly in the dim light. "Yeah, I did. Listen, I know how this must fucking look. You have a pack of assassins on Arcturus gunning for you and it turns out the Broker had a hand in getting them there. Then you sneak away for your honeymoon and I happen to show up. I just wanted to say I had no parts in that assassination shit."

Shepard met her gaze. "Did you _know_ about it?"

Shields sighed. "I had a conversation with the Broker right after your little announcement on ANN, and he told me people were looking to knock you off. He didn't say we were taking the contract, and I advised him against it. But he's not gonna listen to me, not when there's big money on the table."

Shepard grimaced. "I don't suppose he mentioned names, did he?"

Shields shook her head. "No, but he did mention asari Justicars."

Shepard closed her eyes, clenching a fist. "Ha. Well. Someone else told me that, and I didn't want to believe them – turns out he wasn't lying, after all." She gave a long exhalation. "So why are you here, Bea?"

The other woman's clear blue eyes met her own. "I got volunteered for the job. The Broker doesn't want you as an enemy, based on what my bosses are telling me, but they're not adverse to making some money off other people trying. That doesn't mean he wants you dead, or that the Network is out to get you."

Shepard folded her arms. "Bullshit – how the fuck else could the assassins even got on the station if not for your people? He sent them as a _joke_?"

Shields sighed. "Sara, if the Broker wanted you fucking dead, he'd send Tazzik. Maybe you remember him, big salarian, ate that giant-ass Prime on the Citadel like it was a goddamned cookie? I've seen that creep walk off mortar fire. Not even _you_ could take him."

Shepard did indeed remember the black-armored salarian, moving so fast she couldn't even follow his motion with the naked eye in the few seconds she'd watched him fight the big Prime outside the Citadel Tower. She scowled. "So he just decided to help out P. for cash?"

Shield sighed. "Fifty million credits, She-bitch. You can't look away from that kind of cash."

Shepard glared back. "And you didn't have anything to do with it? There was no way you could have _warned_ me?"

Shields shook her head. "I'm...look. I'm not happy about the blue. But like I told you on the Citadel, it's your life – I wouldn't take a hit on you OR her, or participate in anything leading up to it. I don't like the fucking idea of you married to her, but I'm not about to kill your fucking wife so you're single again. On the other hand – what goddamned choices do I have? The Broker's people saved my life when shit went bad at Exogeni. If not for Tetrimus I'd be dead. I didn't know – but if I had, I wouldn't have taken the risk of telling you."

She met Shepard's glare. "I don't owe you my life, I owe _them_. Don't act all goddamned offended."

Shepard stared at her a long moment, then shook her head. "Sorry. I ..." She blew out a breath, leaning back on the crate. "Fuck. I get where you're coming from. I'm not happy about it, but I didn't think you would participate in having my head blown off."

Shield's eyes narrowed. "I have limits, She-bitch. That's not to say I wouldn't mind slapping the shit out of that blue you married. The fuck happened with that?"

Shepard waved a hand in agitation. "When you and I talked, there wasn't shit going on between Liara and I. She had a bad case of hero worship. After that things went south in a big way. Shit … snowballed really fast."

Shields nodded slowly. "I know I'm acting like an ass about this." She stood, facing away. "I had a couple of relationships I thought would work out. They didn't. Then the shit with Feros going bad, and everything I built up was gone in a day, and there you were. I wasn't thinking straight on the Normandy, and I said some pretty hard shit."

Her voice was firm, but had an odd note to it. "Having a crush is something kids do, for fucks sake, not hardened killers. But the shit we went through..."

Shepard sighed. "What am I supposed to say? Bea, I care about you, but not … that way. Besides, you aren't into what I'm into. I can't imagine you enjoying having the shit whipped or beaten out of you, or cut up, or anything else like that."

Bea gave a little chuckle. "So the stories were true. No, that's not my thing, for sure. Maybe that's for the best then." She ran her fingers through her hair. "Figures, even if you were available I'd end up the goddamned gimp. Nothing ever goes my way."

She turned back to face Shepard. "But I have to get something else off my chest. I know what we did to you after Torfan was fucked. I know we didn't give you a fair shake. I'm sure to you it all seems pretty unfair, for me to be upset about this Liara chick when I did a number on you then and expecting you to want to hang with me now, when she's been supporting you all this time."

Shepard shook her head. "I don't even know anymore, Bea, what I feel. I know way too well what it's like to want something you can't have. The shit with you, and Dunn, and Jackson – we're past it now." She sighed. "If it came down to it...I'd still trust you with my back, even if you work for the Broker."

Shields nodded slowly, a small smile on her face. "Then understand what I'm saying isn't to hurt you – but are you in this relationship out of love, or because that asari fucked your head over? I can't let this go without knowing this is … what you wanted. I can handle being shot down, I'm a big girl." Her gaze became almost tormented. "Not sure what I can do if this isn't you at all, though."

Shepard pushed down the surprisingly faint spike of anger at the question and smiled up at Bea. "If you want me to be honest, Bea? Probably both. She's in my head and I'm in hers. The bonding doesn't really leave behind two complete people, and there are times I come out of it pretty fucked up." She closed her eyes.

Shields closed a cybernetic fist. "But you agreed to it? Why in _fuck_?" There was a note of pain in her voice.

Shepard shrugged. "It was that or go fucking insane and die. That goddamned Beacon scrambled my brains for the rest of my life, Bea. Every night was flashbacks to the NYArc, or the slave pits, or the goddamned Reds. They were gonna relieve me of my command, and as an Z2 that would have been a bullet in the head if I was useless. Liara … stops that. And she evens me out." She paused. "I'm probably not …me...anymore. But that's not a bad thing."

Shields sat down bonelessly. "That's still fucked up."

Shepard laughed bitterly. "I want to think, I guess, that I'm capable of love without this bonding thing, but the truth is I don't even know anymore. I'm happy. I'm not miserable and hating myself. I'm enjoying my life. I enjoy being with her. But I know full well the SA is letting me have a free ride here to try to fix their past fuck-ups."

She sighed. "I won't pretend the marriage was something I would have done if not for the fucking Justicars acting the way they did, or the fact the nobility would have had qualms about me being a noble who couldn't have kids."

She looked across the room. "But it's something I'm happy with – and I also think I would have done it eventually on my own, even if not forced.. It's something I'm committed to – and goddamn, Bea, she fucking needs me. She's almost as fucked as I am in some ways – her own mother – "

Shields held up a hand. "I know, She-bitch, I know." The woman took a deep breath, before putting her hands on her knees. "I need to grow the fuck up."

Shepard hesitated before swallowing and holding out her fist. Shields gave a bleary smile and bumped it.

Shepard bit her lip. "I can't tell you … what to do with your own life. I'm sorry the relationships you were in went to crap, but I'm hardly an expert on my own. I will say this – I'm always here for you. I'm sure that isn't what you wanted to hear, but ..."

Shields nodded. "It's what you've got, Sara. I hardly deserve that much, given...Torfan." She looked up. "If this Liara bitch fucks you up or gets you killed – she's not going to live past the fucking funeral. I can't stop myself in that regard."

Shepard smiled sadly. "And if I'm taken out by something else? Will you make sure she's okay?"

Shields grimaced. "Fuck. Yeah, I will." She exhaled. "At least do me some favors or something. Like introducing me to that Commissar of yours."

Shepard chuckled. "Sorry, pretty sure he's taken."

Shields arched an eyebrow. "That hot lieutenant I saw? Alenko?"

Shepard sighed sadly. "Dead."

Shields folded her arms. "What about that big-tittied marine sergeant, the one from Eden Prime?"

Shepard grinned. "Knocked up and doesn't flip the other way."

Shields threw up her hands in exasperation. "Jesus fuck, Shep! You STILL surround yourself with eye candy and _none_ of it can be eaten! What a goddamned bitch."

Shepard burst out laughing, nearly falling off the crate, and it took her almost thirty seconds to get herself back under control. "God, I'd forgotten that whole tirade you gave on Dirth with the dudes checking me out and ignoring you..."

Shields had a small smile on her face, one that faded slowly as she adjusted her position. "Anyway. I didn't come just to play catch up and try to convince you to dump your wife for me." She looked at Shepard, a harder tone to her voice. "My boss sent me to ask you something."

Shepard rubbed her temples. "So now what? I'm supposed to be all buddy-buddy with the asshole after his people didn't get me, Udina and Liara killed?"

Shield shook her head. "No. The Broker doesn't do shit for free, and he doesn't expect others to do shit for free either. He's aware that you are looking into some dangerous information, information left behind by our old boss. He has an offer to make up for his assistance to P. and get back in your good graces."

Shepard hissed in alarm. "How in fuck can he know about that?" Her eyes darted around the room, as if looking for surveillance devices or cameras.

Shields gave a tired, almost sad smile, the expression giving her dark eyes a sorrowful look. "Sara, the Broker knows more than I can even wrap my head around."

Shields then shook her head. "I won't say anything in public – but the Broker is very interested in what this information might consist of. Interested with a lot of credits attached, and his personal intervention to try and derail any more assassination attempts on you." Her expression grew strained. "And your … wife."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm not sure that's a real hot idea, Bea. This crap...it's sick. Very fucking sick. Sicker than Feros. My goal is to find out the people behind it and feed them my ODIN. Handing to the Broker might just make things worse."

She got a grim look in her eyes. "Besides, I can handle the problem myself."

Shields gave a long-suffering groan. "Shepard, are you actually brain-damaged from banging that asari, or were you always this fucking stupid? You can't _fight_ High Lords of Sol! They won't give a shit that you're a Spectre or a noble – you could be Jesus Christ, Superstar and they'd still blast your ass into dust for even trying."

Shepard stared at her. "You're saying the High Lords are behind this mess? The...there's no evidence of that I've seen, hard evidence."

Shields snorted. "That's why the Broker wants to know what you know. We don't have hard evidence either, but a lot of the money flowing around is going to pretty scary places, and some of what the Broker has found out already is ugly as all fuck. Look, Sara – this is some dangerous shit you're into. These people have been in power since the Days of Iron and aren't playing softball. Whatever our old boss found out, the AIS and Commissars were going to kill him. And he was a goddamned hero!"

She folded her arms. "They'll kill you too. If you work with us and we share information, you can figure out who to go after with less actual exposure. You'll have an extra set of eyes watching your back for bullshit like this assassination attempt and one less resource that can be used to get at you." Her eyes darkened. "And maybe we can get at the fuckers really behind that shit on Torfan."

Shepard sighed. "I don't know much yet, Bea. One thing I'm doing on this trip is checking out another lead." She paused. "What's the offer?"

Shields nodded. "Alright, then this is what I have for you. The Broker is willing to pay you twenty million – cash or investments – for this information. He can cover it by buying up some of your weapons designs or something, through front companies. No one will blink twice at that. The Broker offers his assistance in verifying and tracking down anything you find, and will not give out the information to any alien race without talking to you first – he has no wish to bring down the government of the SA."

Shepard frowned. "Why is it worth so much?"

Shields laughed. "The Broker, I think, plans to use it to blackmail the Alliance for concessions – or more cash. That's what he's done with dark fucked up intel he got on the Thirty and the turians, charged them almost a billion credits to keep it quiet."

Shepard's lips turned down. "And if the SA pays him to 'silence' whoever gave him the intel in the first place? The SA already knows I found out something."

Shields shrugged. "The beauty of this is that the Broker can deflect attention off of you to someone else so they don't go after you. If they think the Broker already knows what you find out, then the fact that you know is less dangerous. And let's face it – you aren't really going to go on a damned Tenth Street rampage through Vancouver fucking up dirty politicos or nobles – you will probably hand the shit to the President, right?"

Shepard nodded warily and Shields smiled. "Then here's a down payment for your cooperation – the assassination attempt yesterday? The Broker is fairly certain we can finger the party responsible for it. Play ball and he'll send you the information he has."

Shepard leaned back against the wall, staring at Beatrice. Then she sighed. "Let me do my looking around first. Assuming what I find is something I might need backup with, or that it doesn't make me pull a Kyle, then I'll get in touch with you."

Shields nodded, standing again. "That's fair." She gave a weak smile. "I'd say some bullshit about wanting to see your house, but I don't think your wife would like me around, and we're both antisocial bitches so conversing at the kitchen table would just be awkward."

Shepard stood as well. "You have my TTG?"

The other woman nodded, tapping the cybernetics at her temple. "Grayboxes make everything easier, She-bitch. You should get one loaded with a goddamned clue on how to dance – footage of you in the hotel is on the extranet."

Shepard spluttered, and Bea sauntered past, as graceful as always. "I've sent you my TTG code – call me when you make up your mind." She paused in the doorway. "And Shepard?"

Her voice was filled with worry. "Be careful. The Broker isn't 100% certain that the hit on you was actually paid for by the Justicars – there's either another asari tossing cash into the mix...or it wasn't them at all, and instead was someone else we don't even know about."

Shepard nodded slowly. "Alright. Take care, Bea."

The answer was her usual, as if this was just another day in Neutron. "Never do, She-bitch."

**O-ATTWN-O**

The meeting with Shields left Shepard's nerves rattled, and by the time she got home, Liara was waiting in the entry room, an expression of worry on her pretty features, the security mechs standing by her side with drawn weapons. "What is wrong, Sara?" A pile of dusty metallic cases – Liara's sample kits – lay scattered around the room, and the asari was dirty and smudged from digging.

Shepard sent a command to shut down the mechs, who marched off, and then smiled faintly. "Long story, marazul."

Shepard told her, about the conversation, the Broker's offer, the hints Shields had dropped. Liara's expression shifted between upset, concerned, and pissed, and her voice was icy when Shepard was done. "Is it not bad enough she abandoned you at Torfan? Now she has to channel her inadequate jealousy over our relationship into some kind of self-pitying appeal to help her?"

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "Li, I haven't taken nearly enough shots to the head to think actually trusting the Broker is a good idea – but Bea's got a point, even if I don't like it much more than you do. Whatever made Kyle lose his goddamned mind must have been worse than what I've found out about so far, and sooner or later things are going to come to a showdown."

Shepard glanced around the room, at the little rugs, at the bits of Prothean pieces and models on the wall. "And now that I have something to lose, I worry that stopping this shit is beyond me, or at least me alone."

Liara sighed. "What will we do?"

Shepard smiled gently. "Enjoy our next few days of leave. BuShips hit some issues with the Kazan's drive core, according to the last update I got, so there's no chance of us pulling out early. We'll stay three more days, punch out towards this location of Kyle's, and then head back to Arcturus after getting fuel from somewhere. Should get there in the afternoon on Sunday, and Monday it's back to work. Yuck."

Liara nodded. "It will be...sad to leave this." A smile crossed her features. "I am at peace, happy and content for the first time in a long time. There is a temptation to have you simply stay here with me and let the universe do what it will."

Shepard gave a weak laugh. "I wish. I can't, not yet – not until we've cleaned up this Ylana person, and made sure the President has what he needs to clean this mess Kyle found out about up."

Liara folded her arms. "Not that I question the necessity of such, but at what point do you stop sacrificing for the Alliance, Sara?"

Shepard shrugged, her eyes dark. "I don't know. Part of me says they owe me. Part of me says that if the Alliance hadn't taken a chance on me when I was a gang-banging idiot who'd just shot a hundred people to death, I'd be dead already, and I owe them." She straightened her shoulders. "I've gone for so long pursuing approval and trying to be the best, to show I wasn't a thug any more, that maybe I lost sight of any goals in that path, and I haven't sat down to figure out what I want."

Liara nodded. "I get the impression that there is a reason you are not doing so _now_."

Shepard slowly balled a fist. "There are still people out there, being hurt. There's a little girl just like me in some goddamned slave pit, crying and having her brains fucked out by cruel, evil monsters, or sold to some sick batarian asshole. There's people suffering with no one to even give a shit about them, and pieces of shit living high on the hog on the blood and pain of others."

Shepard looked up. "I can't sit here and just let shit like that keep happening without doing something. Anything."

Liara nodded, kissing Shepard gently. "I know. I just worry that in we will lose the little we have gathered. I am perhaps selfish to feel this way..."

Shepard shook her head. "You'd be crazy if you didn't think that way, Liara. I'll be the first to admit...I'm scared."

Liara tilted her head. "You are afraid? I...you barely even feel fear when your life is in danger, Sara."

Shepard shook her head, taking a deep breath. "That was before. I had very little to lose." She gestured around the house. "Now? I have you. I have this. I have people that, for whatever fucking reasons, look up to me."

She walked towards the windows, looking out over the entry path. "For the first time, I can lose things that make life worth living. That make me want to … be more than I am." She glanced down, and as Liara walked up beside her, took her hands gently.

"That scares the shit out of me, marazul."

Liara nodded. "I understand, I think. I cannot say that I also do not feel fear. Never in my life have the things I have pursued actually come to me." The open expression of concern on Liara's face almost hurt Shepard to look at as she continued. "But I have faith in you, Sara – that no matter what comes, we will face it together. I will not let fear of the tidal wave scare me from the beach, I will not go wandering into the dark and lonely places without you at my side."

For a time they simply held each other.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Later on, after dinner, Shepard sat at the desk in the office nook, overlooking the hills in the distance as the sun slowly crept behind them, casting the valley below in spears of golden fire and reddish luminescence.

She turned her attention back to her terminal, reading about nobility and the requirements. She had half a mind to simply call up General von Grath and ask for advice, but having other people deal with her problems always put her in a bad mood.

After some time, she finally latched on to the key concepts of the work, and realized belatedly that most nobles hired various staff to manage most of their affairs. Rubbing her eyes, she put together a comm packet for Traynor, instructing the ensign to find her a qualified steward.

She supposed, in the meantime, that Inman would serve. She commed him on the TTG link and the line came open a moment later. "Baroness?"

Shepard sighed. "Mayor, I don't have a lot of time left on our leave. And given the kind of crap I'm likely to be headed into, it's going to be at least three or four months before I get back. Later on this year I'll be back at Pinnacle for six months for command training, but I have no one to watch the house – or my affairs – while I'm gone."

The mayor's rough voice was cautious. "Okay, I can see that would be a problem."

Shepard glanced over the documents on her screen. "According to this Accord of Nobility crap, I can name someone to act in my name if I'm otherwise occupied. I'm naming you to do that until I can find and hire a formal steward of my own."

Inman chuckled. "Not to be an ass, ma'am...but my plate is pretty full as it is."

Shepard nodded. "I figured that much out on my own." She exhaled. "That's why I'm going to make you a deal. Whenever things calm down, I'm going to probably take my little hobby of gun-making and turn it into a business. I've come up with ten basic designs for weapons that can be created simply in most omni-forges. I'm willing to give you the designs and let you keep three-fourths of whatever you make off of selling them to big companies if you put the other fourth in my account and watch my place for me."

Inman's voice was surprised. "That's...very generous."

Shepard shrugged. "I don't have a lot of use for money, Mayor. Now that I'm actually getting paid by the SA, I am making a pretty large salary without any costs. And ANN paid me half a million damned credits for that interview with Emily Wong."

She shrugged, leaning back in the chair. "I figure Intei'sai needs the cash more than I do. And since that's what nobles are supposed to be doing anyway..."

Inman laughed. "Well, I don't have a problem with it. That kind of money, I can hire some people to take the slack off me and keep an eye on your place. I'll get the bankers to see if they can't invest your money or something." His voice deepened. "I appreciate the gesture, ma'am."

She rubbed her eyes again. "Yeah, well...hearing all those big numbers tossed around earlier got me to thinking, that's all. I won't bother you any more, Mayor – Liara and I will be pulling up and heading out in three days, on Friday. Take us a bit of time to make it back to Arcturus and get a good night's sleep before going off to fight batarians or whatever crap they have for me."

Inman said good night, and Shepard clicked off, glancing over the haptic screen again before cutting it off.

She stood, working out the kinks in her back, and glanced out the window. The sunset had faded, a few last beams of radiance touching the clouds with a red tint, and in the distance she could see the small, faint lights of Haddick.

She wandered out of the main room, looking for Liara, and found her asleep at her desk in her little office. Data-pads – those of Benezia's – were scattered over it, along with the heavy piece of Reaper hull material, gleaming darkly like frozen oil on the wood.

Shepard hesitantly reached out a fingertip to touch it, shuddering as she felt its slick, almost icy surface. She repressed an urge to wipe her hand on her pants, instead gently shaking Liara awake.

The asari's eyes blinked open tiredly, before flickering up to meet Shepard's. "Sara. I was...having a nightmare."

Shepard frowned. "You felt calm."

Liara shook her head. "It was not a terror that I faced, merely cold fact. I … was distracting myself. Earlier, I was watching the news while you were gone, and that vile al-Jiliani woman was on." Her expression fell. "There are many people in the Alliance who do not approve of us being married, apparently."

Shepard's lip curled. "I should have smashed that bitch's face in when I had the chance. Don't worry about what people like her think, Li. Anyway..." She gestured to the pads. "What is all this?"

Liara sighed. "To get my mind off of the news, I decided to work. I have been reading and decrypting some of the data-pads here, the ones holding my mother's writings... and I believe I have come to understand how exactly she gave into despair."

Shepard dropped into the chair across from the desk. "How so?"

Liara exhaled, and glanced around, finally picking up a pack of cigarettes and pulling one out. She lit it with a slight tremble in her hands, and inhaled sharply on the cigarette before speaking, gesturing to the chunk of Reaper hull as she did so.

"This piece of hull material was found on a ruined garden world, almost ten parsecs away from Thessia. The world was completely devastated – even the atmosphere had been blasted away. The oceans were choked with radioactives, and the land itself was a patchwork of kinetic impact scars and plains of hardened, elemental iron."

Liara tapped her fingernail against the Reaper hull shard. "From the best chemical analysis my mother could achieve on this fragment, the event happened more than sixty million years ago."

Shepard sat back, feeling the hair on her neck stand up and an unfamiliar icy feeling go down her spine. "Th...that's fucking _crazy_!"

Liara nodded slowly. "Sixty million years. Mammals had not even developed on Earth or Thessia at that time." She shuddered. "Mother said that she tried to find a way to defeat something so powerful, but balked at how long they had been doing this - and no race, no one, nothing had stopped them."

Shepard extended a hand, and Liara squeezed it, hard enough to hurt. "My mother's words … haunt me." She squeezed Shepard's hand harder for a second, before letting go to pick up one of the data-pads.

Her voice trembled as she read her mother's words : "We are but insignificant motes of dust, borne alone by a single drop of rain at the edge of a great storm, flung by winds we cannot see. We are so tiny as to fail to even see the truth of the matter – we are but crops, neatly plucked in some eonic timescale that makes even the span of an asari seem as a dartfish. There is no stopping such a force as this. They cannot be stopped, they cannot be hindered."

Liara put down the pad. "I think she may have...lost her mind, Sara, after this. There is more, but I have had no luck in breaking the encryption on the rest yet. Still..." She took another drag on the cigarette. "It is disquieting what I have found already."

Shepard glanced at the Reaper fragment. "Is that thing fucking safe? I don't need you getting indoctrinated...if that's how it even works."

Liara nodded. "I have tested it, albeit briefly. It is emitting no signals or energies, and is simply inert, if unearthly, metal. From what I remember of my mother's notes upon Noveria, indoctrination required active exposure to a functional Reaper." She grimaced. "After all, the composition of the metal is very similar to that of the Citadel – and no one there has been indoctrinated."

Liara gook another puff of her cigarette. "But it is not good to look long upon it. And it will not warm up, no matter what forces I subject it to, or the temperature of the room." She shook her head slowly, picking the fragment up in a cloth, and dropping it into the metallic box, sealing the lid.

Shepard tried to wrap her mind around the concept of something being that old and found it hard. Sixty million was just a big number, something you could translate into monetary terms but not years. She glanced at Liara. "We should let the Council know about this, Liara. After we handle this Ylana tramp and whatever the batarians are up to. I think we need to assume that these Reaper things are even more dangerous than the Beacon vision shows."

Liara nodded, sitting almost bonelessly in the chair, and Shepard levered her up. "Let's get some rest, hon. It's been a long day."

Liara nodded a second time, and stood under her own power, putting out her cigarette. "That is probably for the best, Sara.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The last few days of their time off passed in a mostly happy blur. They relaxed, they talked, they made love, they wandered the countryside, and they let themselves smile. They met a few more people around the colony – Inman's asari wife, awkward and hesitant; the few big farmers, respectful but a touch reserved; several retired marines, a couple of which asked her if she was going to knight anybody anytime soon.

She laughed at the very idea, but said she'd think about it.

All too quickly, however, Shepard found herself saying farewell to a small crowd of people, standing in front of the Commissariat pinnace they had come here in. It had been fueled, and they'd loaded up what little they would take back with them already – mostly the medical bot and their luggage.

Inman gave her a final handshake. "Have a safe trip, Baroness. We'll keep the place as you left it. Might drink your wine up."

Shepard laughed at that. "Feel free. And you have my contact information if you need anything."

In a few hours, the pinnace was in FTL once more, and Shepard turned to Liara. "And now, the bad part. I'm headed to the coordinates on Kyle's OSD – like I said, you'll need to stay on board."

Liara nodded. "I wonder if it is safe to approach in a shuttle of the Commissariat, or if he has rigged this station to explode if investigated by the wrong people?"

Shepard shrugged, settling into the pilot's seat. "We're about to find out. It's another eight hours till we get there. Might as well get some rest."

Dropping out of FTL happened automatically, as Shepard was awakened by the VI, and the pinnace slowed as it entered the system indicated in Kyle's OSD.

The system they emerged into was, for all intents and purposes, dead and boring. A single gas-giant orbited the blue supergiant, the super-heated atmosphere a poor choice for HE3 mining. She scanned, and found a single, FCW-era fueling station orbiting it, one so old it was using accelerator rings rather than hyper-scoops to collect errant fuel.

She brought the pinnace in close, looking for a docking port. Up close, the station was decrepit. Only one hundred feet long and half that wide, it was the standard 'old style' station – a command cupola atop a large cylinder, an axle for a reaction wheel that slowly rotated to keep station, small fusion engines for maneuvering, and the three sharp rings of the accelerator scoop. A ring of solar panels encircled the entire thing, probably its only working powersource.

She finally located the docking ring, and smiled – it had an airlock, that was good. She instructed the VI to dock, not sure of her skill in such a delicate operation, and bit her lip as the pinnace inched closer and closer before achieving lock.

The pinnace shuddered, and Shepard exhaled. She picked up the belt of detonation charges she'd created on Intei'sai, and pulled out her ODIN before glancing at Liara, sitting on the small couch.

"If something happens, instruct the VI to get you back to Pinnacle, Liara."

Liara sighed. "Nothing is going to happen. Shepard. But be careful."

Shepard smiled, shouldering through the hatch into the airlock, letting it cycle her out of the pinnace and into the airlock chamber itself. The chamber was old and rusted, valves and analog gauges showing pressure and oxygen levels. A single old-style survival mask hung on a rusted metal hook, below it a crudely painted set of words.

"If you aren't invited, you should turn around."

She smiled, keying the airlock to cycle her through, and emerged into a darkened, cold corridor. Dim emergency lighting illuminated the floors, and a case of chemlights was carefully placed next tot the doorway. The corridor itself was floored in metal plates, with the walls cracked plastic painted in flaking red trim.

An old style CRT screen inset into the far wall displayed warnings : "LOW POWER. MAIN FUSACTOR DISABLED. SOLAR POWER AND BATTERY BACKUPS ONLY. LIFE SUPPORT AT 45%. FUEL SCOOP OFFLINE. FUEL TANK VENT CONTROLS NONRESPONSIVE."

She arched an eyebrow, and picked up a handful of chemlights, breaking one and lighting it off, throwing long shadows down the narrow, curved corridor.

She walked ahead, noting two sets of footprints in the deep dust – one headed in, one coming out. Kyle, no doubt. She followed them, holding the chemlight high, and came to the elevator of the station, the one that would lead to other levels or the command room.

An old omnitool had been spliced into the controls and the power system, and as she traced it she realized Kyle had wired it straight to the fuel tanks. Pulling it apart would probably set the thing off, assuming it was even stable. She examined the keypad carefully, before typing the code she'd been given on the OSD.

The omnitool chimed, and a faint projected image of Kyle appeared. "The information you're looking for is at the top, in the command cupola. From there, once you're done, shift fuel vent control number five from manual to automatic, and then you have about ten minutes to get the hell clear before this station will blow itself to pieces."

The faint image smiled. "If you aren't the person I invited, then I hope you paid up your insurance."

Shepard snorted, as the elevator slid open. She got in, the doors slowly shuddering closed behind her, the paneling of the elevator grimy and dusty. It rose more smoothly than she expected, opening again almost thirty seconds later.

She stepped out into the command room. Large armaglass windows gave a view of the space around the station, the walls below them filled with bulky, pre-haptic computer equipment. Heavy physical keyboards jutted out from each control station, while dimly lit CRT screens flickered.

In the center of the room, hooked up to the station's computer core, was a large white metal box, with a haptic screen projector on it. A heavy data-cable ran from it to the station core, along with a power-cable lead from the ceiling. Next to the haptic display was a small settop computer, and next to that a heavy console that read 'FUEL CONTROL' and a splash of white paint over toggle switches reading "VENT CONTROL #5".

She nodded to herself – Kyle had a penchant for clear instructions and making things idiot proof. As she stepped forward, a chime went off behind her. She turned, finding a biometric scanner attached to the wall with a glob of omnigel, with a long wire connected to a port leading off somewhere. A moment later, the sensor glowed green, and the haptic screen activated.

The image of Kyle displayed upon it, his hair long and unbound, wearing a suit with a narrow tie. His face was lined with confusion and anger, expressions she rarely saw on his features. "If you got past the biometric scan, then you're either Ahern or Shepard or a very good hacker."

The haptic figure folded it's arms. "I bought a common VI information management program and put this together in about forty eight hours, because I don't know how much time I have. The information I've discovered is large enough to cause the Citadel to declare war on the Systems Alliance, and to cause riots and civil war. There is every chance the AIS or the Commissars will kill me if I tried to go public with this, but I couldn't do that in any case – the backlash would destroy humanity."

The figure of Kyle folded it's arms. "So this VI is the best I can do. I'll say my piece, and then you can ask your questions. Keep in mind this is a VI, so it is going to be very literal, and this is a hack job. Say something if you follow me so far."

Shepard nodded slowly. "I understand."

The head inclined. "Querying database. Voiceprint recognized as Shepard. Good. That means I can deactivate the failsafe sabotage systems. Or you were smart enough to get her voice print and record it...either way, you might as well hear this."

The VI image began to pace. "After Torfan went bad, I wanted answers. Just because Dragunov shot the general in charge didn't give me the name of who actually authorized and planned that mess. Shepard was a wreck, von Grath was trying to distance himself, Team Neutron was gone to pieces, and my boys were dead. I wasn't in a good place, mentally."

"I dug, but got nowhere, and people started saying I was cracking up. I started drinking. The more I found out, bits and pieces, the less sense things seemed to make. I was at a point where I knew something was dreadfully wrong...but didn't know what, or where to look."

"That's why when I was contacted by Cerberus, I listened instead of shooting them dead. I wish I hadn't. I talked with a man claiming that he was once Cerberus's leader, but that the organization had been co-opted by forces within the SA. This person said the AIS had infiltrated Cerberus, forced command figures into the organization, and was responsible for most of the atrocities committed by the organization starting almost sixteen years ago to the present."

Kyle's expression twisted. "This person also said that Cerberus was doing these vile things to gather data and field test projects that the SA was implementing for the long term. The stuff I already found out – the biotic experiments on L2's, the money laundering, the criminal activities – that was literally the tip of the iceberg, just the groundwork for the real project."

Kyle grimaced. "All of it was a framework, designed to prepare humanity for something bigger. Rather than go into all of the disgusting details, I'll summarize – almost everything wrong with the Alliance can be laid at the feet of the people planning to remake humanity. Slaver operations are allowed to continue to gather 'test subjects', while giving Marines combat practice – that's why we haven't taken the fight to the Batarians seriously."

Kyle spat. "And the Emperor knows it. Torfan was worse than I expected – it wasn't just some asshole selling my RRU up the river to generate sympathy – we were a sacrifice to the Batarians, to give them a big win and boost the popularity of the Fist of Khar'shan in batarian space, in return for the batarians handing over tens of thousands of slaves for experiments."

Kyle's eyes hardened. "These experiments were something bigger, part of a project my contact in Cerberus called NOVENSILES. It's an old Roman term for 'new gods'. It will remake humanity – splicing in asari biotics, salarian reflexes, turian poison resistance, drell memory. It will remake society – coordinating pirate attacks and Traverse hostility until the very idea of colonies outside direct SA control is too scary to be attractive. It will destroy the concepts of checks and balances – eventually, the Ministries and the Congress will be phased out."

Kyle's avatar shook it's head. "Control will be in the hands of a council of nobles and big shots from the Corporate Court, along with certain military figures. These lunatics … they plan to turn everyone into super-humans, with a new class of genetically engineered commissars to watch over everyone."

Shepard shook her head, a single word slipping from her lips. "Why?"

The VI Kyle paused, twitching. "Querying database." A moment later, it spoke again. "Right now I don't know what set this off or why they are doing it. My contact in Cerberus felt it was due to reports they had gotten of plans the salarians and the asari were making."

"NOVENSILES is fifty to eighty years away, and the L2 harvesting was just the first step in a longer plan. I'm not sure which noble houses, military groups, or companies are behind this, but I can make guesses. I did more research after I got this information, and the only thing that makes sense is that more than one High Family of Sol is involved."

"Given the scope of the operations, the only Houses big enough to pull off this kind of thing and keep it hidden would Manswell, Chu, al Saud, or Windsor. The rest have the money but own too many businesses and properties to keep out of the public eye for long."

The VI image shimmered. "It is hard enough realizing your children are dead. Harder still to know they died because you were setup, and harder still to know they were harvested like fucking crops after they died. But it is intolerable to think this is but one step in a series of monstrous acts designed to 'secure our survival' when it will do nothing but horrify every other alien race."

Kyle's avatar looked up. "I went with my information to my oldest friend, Yonis Chu. I hinted and danced around what I had learned and he promised me he would look into it. Three days later, he vanished. When he showed up again, he was … different. He didn't mention the conversation, and he was almost hostile to me. The AIS and Commissariat started shadowing me at that time."

The haptic figure folded it's arms. "I decided that sooner or later, they were going to take me out. I recorded everything I could into this computer, and installed it here. I'd come back whenever I could get away, covering it as fact-finding missions for the SA in picking a Spectre candidate. When that I can't do that anymore, I plan to upload what ever I know and set this place to blow if the wrong people show up. I've already recorded the bits of information I had that weren't too incriminating into OSDs. I gave one to Ahern with this location – I could be fairly sure he wasn't in on this – and warned him not to dig. The other, a condensed version without this location on it, I'm keeping on me – in case they kill Ahern, I can still reach out to you, Shepard."

Shepard gritted her teeth. "What am I supposed to do now?"

The VI twitched again, and Kyle's image flickered. "Querying database." It displayed a new image, one that of Kyle somewhat later, his hair tangled, bags under his eyes. "Been recording on this for days now. I'm guessing if you're pulling this segment you're asking what to do."

The avatar rubbed it's eyes. "From what I've found out, NOVENSILES is technically a 'black' project, under an operation called GRAY. GRAY was a follow-on to a pair of black ops ran after the FCW called WHITE and BLACK. Anderson can tell you about WHITE, it was designed to make aliens like us. BLACK created shit like Cerberus."

Kyle exhaled. "Someone high in power authorizes these programs, and the money to pay for it comes from somewhere. The first thing you'd have to do is follow the money trail. I tried, but I don't have the kind of access I need. If you can find where the money is coming from, then you can figure out who is calling the shots."

"Second, is the program itself. NOVENSILES is extremely complicated, and that means they had to have high-powered genetic scientists working on it. The one hard fact I know is that MarsGene has to be in on it, both based on the documents I've seen and the fact that no one else in the galaxy knows human genetics like they do. Given that MarsGene is mostly owned by the Windsors, you're going to have very little luck getting them to cooperate – for all I know, the President is in on this."

Shepard's stomach sank, but she listened.

"Finally, something – a report, a projection, some kind of information – drove whoever is calling the shots to make this kind of decision. I have to believe that the people in charge are not just monsters – they wouldn't do something like this without a very good reason. I don't have all the information, but NOVENSILES is designed to be applied to every human - not just soldiers and other military types, but everyone. You wouldn't do that unless something horrible was going to happen."

Shepard immediately thought of the Reapers. "Is there any hint as to what caused the SA to go forward with this program?"

"Querying database." The VI flickered again, now showing a Kyle dressed in a jumpsuit of some kind. "Researching and digging through data trawls is more Chu's speed than my own. I probably should take this information to him, at some point." Shepard realized this segment must have been recorded earlier, before Kyle had gone to Admiral Chu.

The VI frowned. "I've done what digging I can on my own. Stock transactions, corporate buyouts...I feel like I'm stuck in some overdone spy holovid rather than real life. The picture is a sloppy mess, but I'm starting to see trends."

"The AIS gathers data, the military evaluates, and changes are made. That much is already common knowledge. What isn't common knowledge is that large-scale threats to the SA are actually addressed by a special meeting between the High Lords, AIS high command, and the Commissars. I don't think the civilian government is involved at all, not even the President."

Kyle's image looked to one side. "About nine years back, there was a big presentation to this group titled 'Ramifications of Long Term Hostile Intent'. From what I have gathered, the AIS was saying the asari and salarians were slowly breaking down the SA, causing us issues and problems, and that we had to find some way to stop this without pissing them off openly."

Kyle sighed. "If my suspicion is correct, they came up with this NOVENSILES project at first as a method to put us on a more even keel with asari power and salarian intellect. Where it went off the rails from 'modest genetic enhancement for a few' to 'turn everybody into freaks' is what I don't know yet. I'm hoping that if I can't find the answers directly from within the SA that I can deduce things logically."

The VI fell silent, and Shepard thought for a long moment before asking a question. "What...precisely is the NOVENSILES project?"

The VI flickered, showing Kyle in a suit again. "Are you sure you want to know?"

Shepard sighed. "Yes."

The image was replaced by flashing haptic graphics showing a human male diagram, with flashing segments over various organs. "NOVENSILES is the follow-on project to PROJECT CAIN, the design and implementation of the third-generation Commissar. It is the investigation and conceptualization of a trans-human template for general use by the human population to avert human extinction by leveraging alien assets to improve the human baseline abilities."

Shepard swallowed as she listened. "Initial Phase One design improvements are as follows: Acquisition of drell-style perfect memories, managed by grayboxes installed in every human citizen at adulthood. Grayboxes would be read-write to allow Commissariat monitoring for treason and criminal activity. This feature would be disabled for nobility, military figures above command rank, and Corporate Court CEO's. Acquisition of asari low-level regenerative abilities and the asari organ that boosts their baseline nervous system electrical capacity. Adaptation of elements of the turian liver for poison and chemical resistance, and ability to filter out chiral enzymatic shock reactions. Acquisition of salarian nervous system augmentation to boost human balance, agility, and reaction-reflex time."

"Phase two elements would incorporate acquisition of krogan regenerative sequences, to improve regeneration rates to an estimated sixty percent of krogan maximums. Acquisition of elcor genetic sequences to boost muscle strength. Acquisition of salarian neuronic enzymes to boost neuron formation and brain density. Examination of asari telomerase production elements to boost human lifespan."

"Initial outlines for phase three incorporate additional genetic modifications to allow for improved cybernetic interfaces and VI-managed medical nano-systems that will mitigate injuries, bleeding, and disease. The final project phases will allow on the fly installation of additional genetic packages as required."

She shuddered. That was just fucking insane. They were describing some kind of genetic monstrosity, one that would have their damned brains monitored by the Commissariat at all times. God only knew how many people would have to die in sick experiments to make this shit work.

Cerberus's crazed hacking at aliens and humans at their HQ suddenly made a lot more sense. So did the hesitation the SA had in actually crushing the slaving rings, and the reluctance they showed in doing anything to improve the security on the borders. A lot of ugly things were falling into place, and she buried her face in her hands, wanting to scream.

The VI flickered softly, silent, and Shepard eventually let out a long breath and stared at it. "Was Jack Harper the one who gave you the information?"

The VI shifted slightly. "Yes."

She nodded slowly. "Is there anything else I need to know?"

"Querying database." The VI shifted to a different image of Kyle, this one dressed in what looked like a robe, with a glass of something in his hand. "This is the final message. I'm heading out tomorrow, and after the meeting I'll be resigning my commissions. The Commissars have already raised the question to the Court of Lords for permission to act against me, and the AIS is all over me. I figure if I play my cards right, I'll have one chance to shake them and get to the fueling station on my way towards Century."

Kyle's image ran it's hand through it's hair. "The L2's at Century are in some serious trouble, and a few of them that know me have asked for my help. I don't know what I can do, but I can reach out to a few people. They don't know the truth yet – and I'm not sure if I should tell them or not."

Kyle drank. "I won't be coming back from this operation, either way. Valerie is all grown up now. I've married her off and she'll continue my line, for whatever that's worth. My life seems like a waste now – the sacrifices, the pain, the suffering. Maybe Kai Leng was right – you shouldn't be passionate about anything that won't be passionate about you."

He drank again. "Ahern, Shepard, whoever is hearing this – listen. I can't tell you what to do. I could broadcast this shit in the open, but no one would believe me. And if they did, it would call down holy hell on the SA. I had hoped to get a chance to try and talk with whoever was behind this, but I doubt that will ever happen."

"You can't stop these people without being able to make them see what they are doing is going to get us killed, not save us. The first trials of NOVENSILES are scheduled for 2195. If this mess can be derailed before then, then maybe the SA can put this nightmare behind us. Forget 'justice' – if they can't be reasoned with, then they have to be dealt with violence, even if that costs you your life."

Kyle smiled. "Tomorrow, I'm going to head to Arcturus. Have my hair cut in the morning, put on my uniform, and see if I can't get Shepard into the Spectres, or at least give her a shot. Better than Branson – Elyisum was a SA PR setup, the damned defenses were sabotaged so Branson could have his moment of glory." He drank again. "If they turn her down, I'll see if I can't get someone to get her away from that fool Delacor, at least."

The haptic image gazed at her. "If you want to act on this – tell my contact that you are willing to 'play some hardball'. He'll know what that means. I don't trust him anymore than I have to – but he's not the racist nutjob they're making him out to be in the news, the guy is sleeping with an asari."

Shepard did a double take at that as the image continued to speak. "While I'm not sure I buy that his motives are any better than the SA's, at least the guy is disgusted enough by what is happening to try and stop it. He may be an asshole, but he's no monster. Remember that."

Kyle drained the glass, tossing it away, a shattering sound heard a moment later. "Tell my daughter I love her, if I don't get the chance. Ahern, stop blaming yourself for Michael dying. Shepard, stop blaming yourself for my sons dying."

"Death comes to us all. We can only smile at it, secure that we died how we lived."

The VI flickered, and then spoke in a flat version of Kyle's voice. "There is data available for recording to an omni-tool but it must be encrypted and locked. It will not allow copies to OSD and will self-wipe if accessed without a password. The password is 'ramifications'. The computer and this VI will purge in one minute, thirty seconds. Please say 'yes' if you want the data copied and open port ONE on your omni-tool. The transfer will take thirty eight seconds."

She coughed. "Yes." She tapped her omni-tool, mind still racing at what she learned.

"Transferring. Please wait."

Half a minute later, her omni gave a beep, and a status message showed it was installing some kind of data monitoring package. The VI spoke again. "This system is deleting. Please flick the switches marked with paint to AUTOMATIC and immediately vacate this station. Once activated, you have ten minutes to get to minimum safe distance."

She sighed, looking around for anything else that might be of use. She saw a ratty sleeping bag and empty tins of MRE's tossed in one corner, a pile of omnigel and some tools next to it, along with a Predator pistol, all covered with dust.

Not sure if the planned self-destruct would work, she pulled off the belt of det-charges she'd brought, setting them to go off in fifteen minutes. Either way, the place was going up in smoke.

Grimacing, she walked over to the fuel control panel, even as the small computer emitted a spray of sparks and began smoking. She flipped the marked switches, and a display CRT above the controls began to flash.

"WARNING: FUEL MIX INSTABILITY. PUMPS ARE IN COUNTERROTATING MODE. SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY, RUPTURE OVERPRESSURE DETECTED."

She immediately walked towards the elevator, taking it down to the entry level, moving far more quickly than she did on her way in. As she reached the airlock, she saw that a message had been painted over the doorway she'd missed before.

'Good luck.'

She snorted, cycling through the airlock and checking her omni. By the time she got back into the pinnace, there were six and a half minutes left. "VI, disengage and set immediate highest speed course for Arcturus."

The VI chimed. "Affirmative. Disconnecting. Warning: Maximum speed will deplete fuel prior to arrival at Arcturus Station."

She sat down on the bench next to Liara, who was giving her a concerned look. "Understood. Execute." She ran her hands through her hair, noticing they were shaking, as Liara gently wrapped her arms around Shepard.

"I feel shock and hate from you, Sara. It was bad, what Kyle found out?"

Shepard wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve. "I wanted to fucking vomit, Li. It's...god damn me, it's not even 'bad', it's insane. They've lost their goddamned minds. I see now why the poor bastard took himself out. I can't expose this, the entire SA would go up in a bonfire and the Council would take us out the way they did the krogan."

She closed her eyes. "Maybe they'd be right to."

Liara compressed her lips, not letting go of Shepard. "What are you going to do about it?"

Shepard hung her head, hair falling down around her face. The pinnace rocked again as it picked up speed, and Shepard just sat there for several seconds, thinking.

In her world view, there were innocents – strong people and weak people – and criminals. The strong should protect the weak. The innocent shouldn't be preyed upon by criminals. It wasn't about laws, or anything like that, but that she couldn't tolerate the thought of others going through what she had.

Hating criminals – slavers, murders, rapists, pirates, drug-dealing scum selling shit that got people hooked and then killed – had been simple and clean. They got one chance to surrender, just like she had one chance. If they took it, fine. If they didn't, they died.

She could accept, if only grudgingly, some of the horrible things the SA had done in the name of survival. She could understand the hard logic behind choices such as the Thorian, even if she hated the concept. But this?

This monstrosity?

The crime she was looking at now was beyond her capacity to even grasp. The strong were going to make everyone strong, but at a horrible cost that wouldn't even leave anything human behind. It was the kind of mad, eugenic bullshit that Humanity Now would have spouted if they hadn't been obsessed with human 'purity'.

And the worst part? A tiny voice in the back of her head whispered that with the Reapers coming, maybe she should let them do it.

Liara gently touched her shoulder. "Sara?"

She finally looked up at Liara. "I don't know what I'm going to do, Liara. I just don't know."


	27. Chapter 27 : Arc IV : Consterno

**A/N:** _Now, the action begins again, before I could start having Liara and Shepard even get to the candlelight dinner stage.__  
_

_Fear the glurge. _

_I'd like to thank everyone who's reviewed and left feedback. In particular, several ideas by **Liethr, GalacticAlien, AlexN7, Wandering the Arid Sea, and metaladdict **were very useful. As always, I'm interested in your opinions and feedback - either by review or PM. Also I post some things to my site at logicalpremise dot org, such as art and additional information about the creation of the universe. _

_Not much to say about this chapter - speaks for itself. If you're interested in the details about batarian biotics, my **Encyclopedia Biotica **covers them in much greater detail - and has a snippet about Racek and Balak as well.  
_

* * *

**_THE FOURTH ARC: BRING DOWN THE SKY_**

_"The Damocles Incident - ugh, what a stupid name. Who could have guess in less than a year, all three heroes of that mess - Shepard, Ross, and Solez - would be dead?"  
_

_\- Spectre Jason Delacor, "Struck Six Times By Lightning"_

* * *

It took Shepard and Liara another ten hours to reach Arcturus, time that Shepard needed to gather her thoughts and emotions. The combined blows of learning the Reapers had been killing shit for sixty million years, on top of learning about NOVENSILES, was enough to make Shepard wish they'd never taken either side trip. She sat there bonelessly for over an hour, just reviewing everything she'd learned, and finally just started venting about how fucking stupid and insane it all was.

Liara had simply listened and held Shepard's hands and then, firmly, taken her to the small bed in the secondary part of the pinnace, pulling her to the bed and holding her, gently melding as she did so. There was nothing sexual in it, merely Liara joining herself to Shepard, letting her know she was not alone. Shepard fell asleep in Liara's arms, dreaming of a vast field of pure, green grass under a perfect blue summer sky, but under the tall grass was nothing but black rot.

They were awoken by the VI three hours later, as they reached the nearest automatic fueling station. Shepard got up groggily, frowning at her memory of the dream, before walking into the main cabin and getting a sip of water. As Liara got up, Shepard instructed the VI to pull the ship in to top up and discharge FTL charge, and Liara took the opportunity to connect to the news networks, biting her lip and occasionally looking over at Shepard.

"Are you alright?"

Shepard shook her head. "I...no, probably not." She sighed, getting up from the pilot's seat to come into the main cabin and sit on the bench next to Liara. "I'm almost scared to read the crap on my omni-tool now, wondering what _other_ fucking nightmares I'll find out next. Was Dirth a setup? Mindoir?" She shook her head. "The only good thing in this shit is that most people can't know about this – however bad it is, it must still be small scale."

Liara tilted her head. "Why?"

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose, as the ship light's flickered from drive discharging. "Mainly because even though I don't know shit about genetics, I remember the MarsGene briefing they gave us when we first entered the Marines, when they shot us up with our gene mods. Some doctor told us you couldn't just slap genes around and get results, it was a long-term process that took lots of trial and error. The timeline on the stuff is still decades out, and they aren't even going to start testing it out until 2195 – there's still time to stop this mess before it gets going."

She rubbed her temples. "The thing bothering me now is that I don't know if it _should_ be stopped or not. As sick as it is, I can't believe someone would so something like this without a reason. And I'm not sure I want to know what the fuck the Alliance found out to make this shit seem like a good idea. I can already hear some ass like Dragunov telling me that humanity needs every edge it can get, especially if the aliens are doing even worse crap."

Liara frowned. "What you have discovered, Sara, does not sound like an edge, more akin to a plan to convert humanity into a race of super-soldiers with nigh-unto mindless loyalty to a few leaders. Is this not what your people feared for so long? That another Ardiente would rise?"

Shepard nodded. "Yeah. And if goddamned killer robots that have been eating the galaxy's intelligent life for the past sixty million fucking years weren't on the menu, I'd have no qualms about stopping this sick bullshit and introducing whoever thought it was a good idea to the business end of my ODIN. The problem, Li, is that we might end up needing that kind of shit just to survive."

She spat the words out as if they tasted bad, and Liara nodded slowly. "Yet is that not an excuse, in the end? Is it any better than the justification used for every violation of your faith in the Alliance so far? Is it not better, if we must die, to die as ourselves, rather than go along with that which corrodes us and may not do anything to aid us in the end? No matter how much improvement these scientists can fit into a human body, does it really compare to what we are facing?"

Shepard blinked and sighed. "That, I think, very much depends on the time frame – of the Reapers. If the Reapers show up in a hundred years, or two hundred? It very well might make a difference. If they show up in five or six? We're fucked no matter what we do. And now we don't even have goddamned Vigil to ask him what in fuck is likely to happen next."

She slammed her fist against the wall, and Liara immediately took her other hand in hers. "Sara, you cannot afford to get angry. We have to be calm about this, or you will end up like Kyle. You know your anger makes you act incautiously – and more than anything else, you need to decide what you will do in the short term, over the next year, while being cautious."

Shepard looked at her. "Why?"

Liara smiled weakly. "Because it is in the short term that you are the most likely to make mistakes of emotion, Sara, and to feel pressured to react to events. It is in the short term that what you know can still be snuffed out by those who want such kept a secret."

The asari paused, making a siari gesture of frustration, then continued. "I was, I fear, a poor student of my mother's teachings, but I do remember most of what she spoke about in terms of politics and manipulation. She said that the natural impulse of those who feel 'out of control' is to try to act to gain that control, and yet acting in haste only costs you more control in the long run. Acting before we know more is dangerous – the shallow wave when far at sea can become a cresting tsunami once it reaches the shallow shores."

Shepard grimaced. "That makes sense, and yet I still don't like it." She looked away. "Kyle couldn't figure out what to do, either. He ended up passing the buck off, and dying to try to expose the SA's issues regarding the L2s. I'm sure him killing himself that way must have attracted attention from other alien intelligence types, and probably scared the shit out of them."

She hung her head. "But I'm also pretty sure the people behind this know by now that I know something, Liara. If I sit on this, if I don't act – what if they wait until things cool down and then come after us?"

Liara thought on that a moment, before sighing. "I must mirror your earlier words – I do not know."

Shepard nodded sourly. "Yeah." She leaned back, smiling faintly as Liara took her hand. "I'll say this – having you with me is the only reason I'm not flipping the fuck out. As bad as this is...I finally got a chance to just live, I guess."

She swallowed. "Thank you for being there."

Liara smiled, kissing her gently. "Thank you, Sara, for sharing your soul with me. No matter what comes – I am here, always. And as bad as this is, at the very least...you know. I can hardly imagine your people doing anything worse than this."

Shepard exhaled, nodding, and then shook her head ruefully. "Yeah, I have to look on the bright side. At least the bad news is over. I mean, honestly, what the fuck else could go wrong at this point?"

The haptic news feed blared with the distinctive sound of a Consterno-alert, the newscaster breaking off his report about stock prices to look in dismay off camera before schooling his expression. "Breaking news. Batarian terrorists have just destroyed a colony ship, the ISCVA Visions of Hope, on the Watson trade lane, killing over seven thousand humans and over a thousand asari. A second ship, the ISCVA Destiny's Children, was boarded and several hundred civilians captured after asari citizens on board put up a stiff resistance. Casualties on that ship are still unknown. Alliance forces are already reacting to this tragedy, and we go now live to Alliance Command in Vancouver for a report..."

Shepard covered her eyes with her hand. "I've _got_ to stop saying that fucking question."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Shortly before arrival, Shepard did what she could to clean traces of her travels out of the computer. Inspired by the reaction of the human crew members on Negation, she held up the pendant Jiong had given her, addressing the VI and instructing it to clean any record of them stopping at Negation or at the nameless star system with Kyle's station on it.

The VI's voice spoke. "Commandant authority accepted. Purging navigation unit."

Liara had looked surprised, but Shepard wasn't taking any chances. She did a sweep for any kind of bugs or listening devices, finding none, and then queried the VI to see if it recorded onboard conversations – which it didn't, as it turned out – before being satisfied things were secure.

By the time her pinnace touched down at the shuttle docks on Arcturus, the space-side capital was buzzing with activity. Endless rows of spaceships hung in space, thousands of Slepnir maintenance mechs welding and patching battle damage, while four huge dreadnoughts hulked just beyond the station itself, one of them the night-black Manswell's Wrath, the battleship of the Commissariat, apparently repaired from the beating it took at Noveria. Clouds of fighters circled the station, some landing on a trio of carriers that came through the mass relays, others flying patrols like agitated bees around a hive.

Shepard wasted no time disembarking, finding Jiong already waiting for at the docks with a half-squad of lancers even as the mooring arm locked down on the ship and connected the fueling lines. "Baroness, welcome back. I'm afraid things are rather _perturbed_ at the moment." He held out his hand to her. "If you don't mind...I do need that little trinket my lancers loaned to you for your trip back."

She handed the Commissariat Authority pendant over. "Nifty thing. It came in handy."

Jiong nodded, pocketing it. "I was instructed to give it to you by the High Commandant. I'm instructed to provide you with such anytime you leave direct military command."

Shepard frowned. "Did he say why?"

Jiong's expression tightened. "No, and when I asked he told me it was better for me not to know, but that you would understand if I mentioned the name 'Kyle'. I presume he refers to Major Kyle?" The Commissar frowned. "Is there something I should know?

Shepard felt herself go cold. "Jiong...he's right. You're better off not knowing. What worries me is what and how he knows, but I'll ask him later. For now...fuck." She paused, glancing hard at Liara, who gave her a worried look, before forcing her nerves to settle. She'd deal with whatever de la Muerte knew later.

"For now, just give me a sitrep. I haven't gotten any orders yet through my omni – from the President or Command – but I caught the broadcast about the terrorist strike while we were fueling, what is the situation on that?"

Jiong nodded slowly. "As you wish." He sniffed, adjusting his sash. "Right now, segments of the Third Fleet are being dispatched to the area, along with several scout flotillas and some hastily converted AIS assets. There were three colony ships in the convoy, one of which was apparently damaged by what seemed like a random micrometeorite strike. They'd dropped kinetic barriers to discharge drive buildup, and were helpless when the pirates hit."

He gestured sharply at Shepard's and Liara's luggage, and the lancers bent to carry it, not even straining as they picked up the crate with the compact form of their medical bot. Shepard briefly wondered about that strength, and then turned her attention back to Jiong. "Sloppy goddamned civilian idiots."

Jiong began walking to the dock entry port and security, nodding. "Indeed. The batarians struck from polar orbit of the gas giant, suppressing the fueling stations defenses with EMP burst missiles before overtaking the colony ships. One ship still had it's barriers up and wasn't affected, opening range quickly. The other two were helpless – the batarians opened fire on one at pointblank range with full spreads of disruptor torpedoes, complete overkill. They then stormed the other ship, taking many captives, until asari civilians on board lead by a former commando counter attacked."

Shepard exhaled, watching as the security force at the checkpoint scanned them each and began running their ID. "Brave of the asari to do that. Batarians respond to resistance with terror."

Liara nodded. "They would have felt compelled to do something, especially if they had the talent to aid their fellow colonists."

Jiong nodded. "Indeed, Lady Liara. Sixty eight asari were killed, but they drove the batarians off. From what little eyewitness accounts we have, the batarians were small in number and assisted by batarian KRITH mechs – perhaps only ten batarians in the boarding party. A few reports said AUGMEK boarding battlesuits were seen but not used."

Shepard frowned. "Even if they were civilians, sixty asari should have posed more of a threat to just ten batarian slavers."

Jiong sighed. "The uniforms they were wearing match descriptions of the Fist of Khar'shan."

Shepard stiffened before gritting her teeth. The batarian military was split into three groups – the State Guard, mostly low and mid caste batarians with crappy armor and little training, made up the bulk of it. Most raiders and slavers had a few years in the State Guard, and they were hardly much of a threat to a well armed group.

The Fist, on the other hand, were the elite soldiers of the Hegemon-class, the high-caste elites of batarian society, trained heavily and with topnotch gear. The Fist was easily a match for experienced A-rate marine troops, and some elements of the Fist were a match for N-series marines. For the Fist to be involved, war had either been declared or chaos had broken out in the Hegemony.

She frowned sourly. "I can just fucking guess what the Hegemony had to say."

Jiong handed over an ID card to the security men and nodded. "Yes, well. The Hegemon himself communicated to the Council and the Alliance that these men were rogues, operating completely outside of batarian authority and the will of the Emperor. He seemed very angry – AIS psychologists think he's actually telling the truth."

They finally passed the checkpoint, and Shepard nodded. "Alright. I'm headed to Aethyta's apartment with Liara, to get changed into uniform. Link up with Pressly and Captain von Khar and let them know we'll have a staff meeting in three hours. I can only guess at what Command will want us to do. Do you know the status of the battlegroup?"

Jiong shook his head. "Commissar D'Alte was checking on that, along with fixing up a small altercation involving an attempted trespasser, one Conrad Verner."

Shepard immediately spat curses, surprising both Liara and Jiong with the vehemence. "I take it you recognize the name?"

Shepard nodded. "Goddamned stalker creep. He's some lunatic I ended up saving on Dirth. The man's a _nutjob_, and his wife is constantly staring at me. I swear, it's a straight rape-stare. Of all my so-called 'fans', they're the worst and craziest."

Jiong's expression was one of poorly concealed amusement. "I will ensure he does not trouble you any further on Arcturus, ma'am." He turned to one of the Lancers not carrying any luggage. "Wilhelm, you look tense. Go find a kinetic strike hammer and see if you can't _reason_ with Mr. Verner."

The lancer gave a grin and ambled off, and Shepard shot Jiong a look. "Jesus Christ, you can't just kill or maim him for being a weirdo!"

Jiong waved a hand airily. "Oh, he won't cripple him or kill him, just scare the stupidity out of him. Wilhelm is actually rather laid back. Now, on the other hand, if I sent Micah there...well, the last time we had to 'intervene', he felt it appropriate to 'accident' a pair of slavers into falling inside a HE3 compression turbine while it was running."

Liara looked faintly ill, while Shepard's face split in a grin and she gave the Lancer in question a sketched salute."I gotta remember that one. Although not as good as the time I tossed a slaving asshole out the airlock five seconds before the mass relay we were using activated. Gave our ship a literal blood-red racing stripe."

The lancers all gave murmurs of approval, while Jiong turned to Liara. "You married this barbarian?"

Liara nodded and sighed. "She is still a work in progress."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Aethyta was around when they arrived, inviting them in, badgering Liara with embarrassing questions about their honeymoon. Shepard took the asari's offer of a quick drink, and managed not to spit it out when Aethyta innocently asked her if she'd tried using a strap-on with Liara yet.

After recovering her composure – and informing Aethyta that, no, things had not gotten to that level of adventure yet – Shepard checked her omni for orders or messages. Since there were none, she went ahead and pulled out her uniform the kitbag she'd brought with her.

Shepard got changed quickly, and had barely finished up in the bathroom when her omni-tool rang. She checked the message – she was summoned directly to Alliance Fleet Command. And not just her – the dispatch included every single Alliance command officer in charge of actual ships or assets from the rank of Major or Rear Admiral and up, for them to report directly to their nearest command structure or for them to comm-link into a shared line.

Per her ongoing orders from the President, she sent a query to the Office of Presidential Communications asking if she should follow the orders. A few minutes later, she got a call on her omni-tool.

She connected to Aethyta's haptic terminal, and the call came through, displaying the face of the President himself. "Major Shepard, good to see you have returned from your sojourns. I suspect this is in regards to the Admiralty summons?"

She nodded. "Yes, Your Majesty – Eliza made it clear I wasn't to take orders from anyone but you without checking first. This isn't a secure line, though, sir."

Windsor nodded grimly, his features drawn with tiredness and something else – worry, perhaps. "In this instance, Major, you are to follow Admiralty orders. The batarian situation that has been brewing blew up rather faster and, as it turns out, far more nastily than I expected – a full scale revolt of a portion of their armed forces is not only attacking the Emperor's power base but colonies in the Alliance. The media is going crazy and the Admiralty has already informed me that you are important to their plans."

She nodded. "Yes, Your Majesty. Any news on this Ylana person?"

Windsor sighed. "No. Admiral Dragunov should have some news regarding the search, but as far as I know the Council has not found anything of note. Things have been … hectic, what with assassins and Eliza being hurt so badly."

She nodded. "I'm sorry to hear Eliza was hurt. How is she doing?"

Windsor's face flickered with rage for a moment before settling into a mask. "Poorly, Major. The assassin's bullet was a very powerful round with toxic composites within the casing – she's currently still in critical condition."

She nodded slowly. "While I was on leave, I was contacted by an agent of the Broker, Your Majesty. She claimed the Broker could identify the people behind this attempt."

Windsor's eyes narrowed. "I can already guess who is behind this cowardly strike, Major, but I am very interested as to how the Broker would know who was involved – and his price for such information."

She sighed. "He wanted to know about what my old CO found out." She swallowed. She didn't know how to say that she'd found out even more, and worse – or that it implicated his family. She vividly remembered the Illusive Man's amused expression when she'd confidently told him the President would clean up the corruption.

She didn't know if he was in on it or not – probably not, but who could know?

The President sighed, rubbing his temples with his right hand before shaking his head. "No. I cannot allow that kind of leverage to fall into the Broker's hand, as there is little doubt whatever use he put it towards would not be in the best interests of the Alliance. I will have the AIS continue to investigate – anything else is simply to risky."

She nodded, not quite understanding but realizing it was way above her pay grade. "In that case, Your Majesty, I'll report into Command now."

He exhaled and nodded. "Be _very_ careful, Major." He disconnected, and Shepard frowned at his tone before explaining to Liara and Aethyta that she had to go.

Leaving Liara with her father, she made the trip through the station fairly quickly. Alliance Fleet Command dominated the Sphere, a towering white fist among various outlying subsidiary buildings such as Special Ops command and the like. Soldiers and Commissars choked the streets near the building, but she was able to get through by dint of being recognized and waved through.

She entered the main lobby, tiredly noting that the large reception area was literally infested with the SA logo on every possible surface – including the door handles of the lobby – and finding herself standing at the receptions desk and facing yet another disgustingly handsome young ensign, this one some half-Japanese, half-Hispanic type. He smiled winningly and lead her to the tower's upper floor, through at least half a dozen security checkpoints.

The door they came to after getting off the last elevator was real cherry wood, embossed with a gleaming brass plate – 'Alliance High Command'. She checked her uniform before entering, pushing through the doors, noting as she did so a pair of armed Marines stood to either side.

The room was not as large as she expected, but dominated by a huge table with inset haptic screens and data displays. A rotating holograph of the Kisa Sector rotated in faint blue lines in the center of the table, and thick, heavy leather seats on gimbal mounts surrounded it. The floor was done in black decking rather than the thick carpets elsewhere, the wood-paneled walls broken up by long rows of view-screens above panels of comm-links and other communications gear. A few technical enlisted types worked at these stations, setting up links to the officers communicating remotely.

At the head of the table was Admiral Dragunov, flanked by High Admiral Branson. Admiral Hackett and Admiral Ahern sat side by side, while two more chairs were filled by admirals she didn't know. The sides of the table were filled by more admirals, and more than a few generals, although she didn't see General von Grath.

A number of fresh-faced ensigns, or the occasional lieutenant, attended each officer, with a few just standing nearby an empty chair, and she was amused to find Traynor standing there, bright and bubbly, behind one such chair.

She walked over to Traynor, who gestured to the chair in front of her. "This is your seat, ma'am. They called us in an hour ago to prepare – uh, well, to prepare what we could." She nervously handed Shepard a data-padd. "Not sure what it's about, but anyone with an aide was supposed to have their aide report in early. I, uh, didn't know who you'd picked...so Pressly sent me. Ma'am."

Shepard smiled. "That's fine, Ensign. I appreciate it. Have you heard back from BuPers on my recommendation to promote you?"

Traynor's features broke into a wide smile, her accent deepening. "I did, I did! They approved it. I will be a lieutenant starting Monday...I just need to get to the uniform shop after this meeting."

Shepard nodded, taking her seat. "Fair enough. We'll talk in a bit." She glanced around the table – the people sitting on her side were mostly major of marines and junior rear admirals. She was seated next to a highly decorated major of marines she didn't know and a man she vaguely recognized as the commander of DACT Alpha.

Branson looked up, glancing around, and nodded. "Still need a few more people to join. Ensign Jacobs, go ahead and get the comms tight-beam setup to Vice Admiral Galth and Rear Admiral Schulman."

Ahern snorted, the five wide bars of a Fleet Admiral gleaming brightly on his shoulders. "I'm still astonished you pulled that crazy old bitch from Pinnacle without using pliers or a blowtorch."

Dragunov gave him a flat, hard stare. "And I still remain amazed you haven't been arrested for public indecency with that mouth of yours. Now, be silent."

Ahern raised an eyebrow, but to Shepard's amazement, said nothing, only leaning far back in his chair and adjusting his uniform belt, the black seashell on it catching the light. This drew a truly black scowl from Dragunov and a weary sounding chuckle from Hackett – Shepard could only assume it was some inside joke thing she wasn't aware of.

A dozen more people entered the room over the next five minutes, most of them majors or rear admirals, before Branson nodded at the two Marines standing by the doors. They saluted, and the various comm techs left their stations, followed by the Marines, who shut the doors afterwards. He glanced around the room, and at the various view-screens on the walls, before speaking, his voice perfectly modulated as usual, but his features a bit drawn and tired.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. Some of you are dialing in remotely, some of you are here – but this is every single command officer in the entire Alliance fleet, and half its generals. Obviously, such a gathering is not to be taken lightly – we have serious trouble to discuss."

The High Admiral nodded to the single Commissar in the room. "This briefing is classified as TANTALUS-FIVE. Many of you have aids or comms assistance who are not cleared to this level – I wish to reinforce to everyone in the room that NOTHING we discuss can be shared with anyone not currently attending this meeting. Otherwise..." he gestured to the Commissar, who tapped the butt of his flame pistol and gave a truly humorless smile.

"Well...you know."

Branson's patrician features tightened. "The purpose of this briefing is to discuss OPERATION LUNAR GLAZE. The focus of this operation is simple: The batarians have a serious revolt on their hands. According to the information we most recently have, an entire segment of the batarian Fist of Khar'shan has turned against the Emperor and is fighting independently."

He waited for the murmuring this created to die down before continuing to speak.

"This includes, at a rough count, one dreadnought – an older class, but still a dreadnought – along with at least twenty-five cruisers, fifteen destroyers, and a large number, perhaps upwards of forty, frigates and raider-class vessels. Also in this force is at least five hundred hardened Fist of Khar'shan infantry, at least a dozen AUGMEK battlesuits, and two or three Beastmasters. No idea yet on regular ground forces, but we expect – based on the ship numbers – as many as another thousand troops could answer to them. Mind you, this is all Fist forces, not State troops."

He tapped a padd next to his seat, and the holographic globe at the center of the table vanished, replaced by two images of batarians. One was high caste – his skin golden, eyes a faint white, with long falls of white hair in an elaborate queue down the back of his head. His features were set in a sardonic smirk, revealing blackened, fang-like teeth. The tattoo of the SIU was clearly visible on the neck.

The other batarian was almost brutish looking, with fatter jowls, small beady eyes, faded dark brown skin, and a wide scar across his upper right eye, which was covered by a heavy black cover and an intricate marking that she knew had something to do with batarian religion. His expression, if she read it correctly, was a mix of sullen and yet amused. A stubble of ratty black hair could barely be made out around the edges of his head.

"According to both eyewitness reports from the incidents in several locations and the AIS, as well as statements released by the Hegemon and his aides in his most recent communication with the Alliance, these two batarians are in charge of the rebellion, along with four admirals we are still waiting for images on."

He tapped his padd again, and the right most image flashed. "The one on the right, the high-caste one, is Ivthak Racek – hegemon-caste batarian, the highest below the imperial family to be exact. Spent quite some time in the SIU and the Fist before being assigned to round up batarians for conversion into biotics. Very charismatic, very highly placed in the Hegemony – his family owns a good 10% of Khar'shan. Racek spent almost six years as a full member of the Imperial Guard, and was a potential Spectre candidate actually undergoing training when the batarians were removed as an associated Council race."

Ahern grunted. "In case some of you can't recognize the bastard, Racek is the guy who went head to head with and nearly killed Eni Gaisha, the salarian biotic who took down Tyriun No Kage. Racek is very dangerous and knows more about how to stop biotics than anyone else, as he basically ran their program to create new ones."

Branson nodded. "Thank you, Admiral. The other batarian is, unfortunately, less familiar – we've only gotten a partial ID on, named 'Balak'. No history on this one, fragmentary footage five months ago indicating that he was probably a Glorious batarian recently drafted. The Hegemon has only called him a 'biotic criminal' and said he was undergoing training with Racek's units. The missing eye is covered with a patch and a marking from the Temple indicating it was lost in service to the Hegemony – even for a Glorious batarian, losing an eye is usually grounds for execution. The fact that they didn't and gave him an exemption implies he must be truly nasty."

Dragunov spoke up. "These two, along with the aforementioned batarian admirals and the Beastmasters, are most likely the primary instigators of this revolt. We can't yet rule out someone was behind it that hasn't shown their face, but we are thinking it's unlikely."

An older male admiral of the green spoke out as Dragunov paused. "Can we be sure this isn't just some stunt by the Hegemony to draw our ships out of position and they let them strike elsewhere?"

Branson glanced at Dragunov almost uncertainly, and the older admiral spoke. "The AIS has modeled the chances that this is some kind of ploy and found them to be very close to zero. We've had confirmed independent reports – both the AIS and STG, in fact – that several batarian warships were destroyed by the dreadnought under Racek's command, killing more than five thousand batarians, including a nephew of the Emperor himself. Since harm against the imperial family is punishable by the death and death only, and the nephew was the only heir to the imperial throne..." He trailed off, and several heads nodded.

Shepard wasn't sure she understood the issue, until a figure on one of the view-screens – Admiral Yonis Chu of the AIS – spoke. "Right now the AIS is also thinking this is legitimate because the bulk of the damage has been to imperial forces and garrisons. The Imperial Guard is the only thing allowing the Emperor to retain his power – otherwise we feel the Hegemon and the other high-caste types would have overthrown him. The Emperor would not weaken his power so drastically on a ruse."

Branson spoke again. "Based on the actions of this group, our initial analysis seems to think their goals are two-fold. First, their actions against the Emperor are designed to weaken his grip on the hegemon-caste, and the Hegemon and his government. Second, the strikes on the Alliance are clearly designed to bring us to war with the Hegemony"

A general grunted. "The hell would that do? Why would these people want a war if they're trying to overthrow the Emperor?"

Branson sighed. "Assuming the Emperor lost the power to truly dominate the high-caste any longer, probably collapse the government. If they can weaken the Emperor and make him look powerless, and at the same time win a war with the Alliance and cast the Hegemon as stronger, then the Emperor might go back to being a figurehead. It's also possible that Racek plans to overthrow the Hegemon – right now we aren't sure of their final motivations."

A marine major gave a hard bark of laughter. "Well, sir, if they _want_ a war we are more than happy to _give_ it to them, right?"

Branson folded his hands together on the table and shook his head. "At this juncture, no. While it seems clear they want a war – at least, these separatists do – we are not prepared to move on that. A war with the Hegemony is not a war, I fear, we can currently fight."

There were several angry mutters at that, and an older general finally spoke. "With all due respect, that's a load of crap. I still don't understand why the Alliance hasn't pulled the trigger on the batarians in the first place, but no matter how shot up the fleet is, we still have more dreadnoughts, more ships and more damned marines. We just got through putting our boot into the damned geth, why not take this lunatic right the hell out and drop the batarians?"

Branson sighed. "While there are several reasons why the Alliance hasn't pursued all out war against the Hegemony yet, the primary reason remains that we simply can't afford to do so at this time – especially after the Benezia Incident. Our resources are stretched beyond the breaking point as it is, and we're reaching tax rates of upwards of 45% on the corporations and most Class III worlds already – there's just no more money."

He held up a hand to forestall protest. "It's not that we couldn't win, it's that we can't afford to fight. I know that sounds like a non-sequitur, but the ugly truth is that 'winning' such a war would not only shatter our economy supporting it but leave us with a fleet strength of less than ninety ships."

That silenced the room, and he continued in a softer tone. "With so much of the fleet in refit it will take weeks or months to come back to full strength, which means we'd be going in mostly with Third and Fourth Fleet. I'm sure Admiral Tyrson will be more than happy to tell us that Fourth Fleet is in no shape for such a fight."

An admiral on one the view-screens spoke. "Admiral Tyrson here, out of the Fourth Elysium. And you're right. I want to hit them as bad as anyone, but Fourth fleet is in no shape for any kind of fighting. Our scout flotilla is blown to hell, the core of the fleet is going into it's sixth year without a refit, and this new battlegroup of Major Ross just took all my new ships." He folded his arms. "That's not mentioning the fact our supplies are depleted, First and Second Fleet are all shot up, Fifth Fleet completely wrecked, and Third is scattered to hell and gone trying to cover all the colonies. If we get into a damned war the squints will hand us our ass, and even if we won we'd be easy pickings for Aria."

Branson nodded. "Additionally, BuShips is warning us that we are critically low on mass core circuits, optronic replacements, torpedoes, medical supplies, and missiles. Our stocks of omnigel are down to less than ten million gallons, and since we only produce two million a month and are currently going through three million with all the repairs, we'd run dry quickly. At which point we have to start breaking down existing equipment at poor conversion ratios."

Dragunov spoke. "That doesn't even start to cover the fact that our colonies would be unprotected, open for other pirates to strike our shipping with impunity. Our marine forces are mostly intact, but we lost nearly a fifth of our transport capability at Noveria and more at the Citadel. Most damningly, neither of our carrier-dreadnoughts will be out of dry-dock for over six months. No, we cannot go to war – but nor can we let these lunatics blow up colony ships and raid our worlds, either."

A vice admiral spoke up from the view-screens. "You said they are trying to force the Emperor down, what if they're trying to overthrow him entirely?"

The Commissar spoke. "They are not trying that, we feel. They simply are forcing a situation where the Hegemon would be given credit for stopping us from winning such a war, and weakening the Emperor's control so they have more authority over him. Their secondary objective seems to be wrecking humanity's image at being capable – us joining the Council seems to be what set this off, as all of their demands so far is that we are expelled from the Council."

Shepard bit her lip. "Background is great, but what are we planning to do, sir?"

Dragunov unfolded his hands, spreading them. "Right now, we're responding to events as they happen. The timeline we know so far is simple. Strikes first occurred inside batarian space, and somehow this Racek character was able to suborn and convince at least four batarian admirals to his side. Balak took out sixteen of the Imperial Guard strike force sent to stop them single-handedly."

Branson spoke again. "They began striking at Alliance territory after that, mostly worlds on the fringe of the Traverse and wildcat colonists. Currently, there is a force of ships threatening Terra Nova, and smaller groups near our major shipping lanes. We suspect they plan to stick to harassment until we send a significant fleet after them, then hit us with everything they have and gamble they can win. Right now, the only thing holding them back are what few Corsairs we have in the region, and most of them have withdrawn – they can't engage real warships very well."

Dragunov took a deep breath. "Our response is going to be two-fold, therefore. Admiral Hackett will be driving a heavy combat flotilla of cruisers, frigates and destroyers from First, Second, and Fifth Fleets towards the Terra Nova group. The bulk of our carrier assets will be deployed along a line, with heavy frigate support, between the front and our Class II and III colonies and aggressively patrol, with support from those systems. Once we get localization on the smaller groups, we strike in overwhelming force."

He brought up a map display. "If we can keep them separated and don't let them a mass up for a traditional battle around some hot star, we can pick them to pieces. They have a good number of ships, but they have to be run even more ragged than ours are due to the embargo. No optronics, less than effective ECM, and probably very low heat endurance."

"Meanwhile, we send three strike forces in after their leadership. The AIS feels if we take out the leaders the thing will fall apart, and the batarians can clean up what's left. Right now we have three very flexible elements. Major-Captain Jeremy Ross is in command of Battlegroup Ajax, and is in command of the test platform for the new cyclonic barrier shielding the asari sold us last year in return for licenses for hyperscoops. Ajax's ships can take a hell of a beating, and Ross has six lances of Agamemnon battlesuits and DACT for deployment. Given the heavy infantry skills you show, the toughness of your ships, and the fact that you can soak the most damage, you'll be going after the four admirals and a large grouping of cruiser anchored at Veldan Six. Your suits will be more than a match for their AUGMEKS, and your DACT will be perfect for deep space boarding."

He gestured again. "Major of Marines Kinthia Solez is deployed forward from Watson in charge of Battlegroup Medea. Her ships are all the new heavy missile frigates equipped the first run of Saracino-class hypervelocity missiles, as well as a brand new carrier-cruiser with the ECM/Heat stealth fighters modeled off of the Normandy. Major Solez has two hundred asari marines on her ships, some of them with actual commando training, and her own personal strike force of six Furies. You'll be going after Racek and his dreadnought – your hypervelocity missiles should allow you to remain out of the range of his heavy guns, and once his ship is crippled, your asari can storm in and overwhelm him."

He finally locked gazes with Shepard. "And Major-Commander Sara Shepard is in command of Battlegroup Chiron, which has a potent mix of technologies – stealth frigates, the new Kyle-class torpedoes, and a flexible intermix of ground forces – battlesuits, MAKO's, N-class marines. Shepard herself also has her Spectre clearances and rights. Given that this Balak is definitely going to be the hardest nut to crack and we don't have good information on who is with him or what his forces consist of, you'll be assigned to him – as far as I know, you're the only officer we have whose has gone toe-to-toe with a Glorious batarian biotic and survived."

Branson spoke. "These three battlegroups will be used to localize, pin down and disrupt the batarian strike forces. Once they've disrupted and taken out the leadership, ships under Admiral Hales Okuda from Mindoir's Third Fleet will jump in and finish them off."

Branson paused. "We'll be providing each of the three battlegroup CO's involved in this evolution private briefings after this call. The rest of you will each be assigned, based on your location, the condition of your ships or units, and our ability to move your groups around, a strike force under a fleet admiral. Our goal is to use the Fleet as a whole to support operations without sacrificing the security of our Class II and III colonies – or calling on the Solguard."

Admiral Hackett folded his arms. "The plan will require heavy support – some of your carrier-cruisers and lighter scouting elements will be pulled and reorganized into a temporary ad hoc scout flotilla. Rear Admiral Schulman will combine this with her own flotilla to provide forward intelligence."

The Hispanic looking woman sitting two seats down from Shepard exhaled. "Admirals...with all due respect, Major Ross, Major Shepard and I are all very recently promoted. I can't speak for them but throwing Medea into this situation blindly is going to hurt us. My ships are good, but matching a pack of heavy missile frigates against a dreadnought seems very risky, and if this Racek is as good as you say he is at shutting down biotics, my Furies and I aren't going to be very effective."

Shepard steeled herself before speaking. "I'm going to have to agree with Major Solez, admirals. While Chiron is fully functional, you've just told me I'm going out against forces we have no good estimates on, in terms of ability or strength. And the last time I went one-on-one with a Glorious, I got very damned lucky to even survive."

The heavyset man at the end of the table glanced at them both before nodding. "My fellow majors are too kind, shocking given who they are. I'll be blunter – are you trying to get all three of us killed at the same time, sirs? You expect me to take on AUGMEKS in deep space, Shepard to go after a biotic killing machine, and Solez to fight someone that negates her biotics?"

Ahern gave him a grin. "Jesus, you three are a pack of – "

Dragunov barked. "**_Ahern_**!"

Ahern coughed " – wimps." He glared at Dragunov, then sighed. "Look, I trained each of you idiots myself, and I know very well what you can and can't do. Some pack of squints with about a dozen brain cells between them isn't even going to leave you three enough scraps to pick your teeth with. There's a reason you'll all get a private briefing after this is over – just pipe down for now."

Major-Captain Ross folded his arms, and Dragunov exhaled. "Admiral Hackett will be conducting the force-op briefing in fifteen minutes, so you have time to get some coffee, hit the head, and stretch your legs. Majors Ross, Shepard, and Solez – meet me in my office in twenty. Dismissed."

Everyone stood, High Admiral Branson immediately heading off with Hackett and Dragunov out one of the side doors, while Ahern slowly walked through the small crowd to stand in front of Major Ross. "You pussying out already, boy?"

Ross's heavy jaw jutted out a bit as he gritted his teeth. "No sir. But this is nuts. We're part of the Council now – why in God's name are we not calling for help? This whole plan seems insane. Sir."

Ahern rubbed his eyebrows, shaking his head. "The blues and spikes are busy with the geth, the quarians still trying to find a place to land and fixing up their shot-up ass fleet, and the damned salarian fleet is still in worse shape than our own. The elcor are helping – they're sending some ships to the Traverse to hopefully fend off pirates or thugs, and the volus shipped us more missiles, at a discount. But none of that changes that the Council won't get fucking involved. That's been made clear."

Shepard grimaced. "Politics, then, sir?"

Ahern nodded. "No, just the fact the Council fleets are all wrecks and the Council itself doesn't want to rock the boat. The way it was explained to us in the Admiralty briefing, if the Council got involved, the turians would want to take the chance and burn down the entire goddamned Hegemony, and if the Hegemony splintered, no one would be able to stop warlords from running rampant through the Dark Rim, the Traverse, and shit knows where else. There's no telling what might fucking explode. So, because they're not sure the Hierarchy will play ball, they'd rather just let us handle it."

He gestured to the door. "You three run on and talk with that ass Dragunov – he'll have your marching orders all lined up, and trust me, we're not sending you out to get killed. I've wasted too much goddamned time and energy training you three morons to have to repeat it, especially you, Shepard."

She smirked at that. "Fine...and thanks for doing what you did with the N7s, sir."

Ahern folded his arms. "Just because I'm hard doesn't make me a dick."

Major Solez muttered something under her breath, and Ahern snickered, walking off.

Shepard exhaled, glancing around. "Well, I guess we need to find Dragunov's office...I'm afraid this is my first time in Command."

Solez nodded. "Jerry and I have been here before. There's a set of restrooms at the end of the hall by the elevator – just past those is a second set of elevators that leads to the Admiralty offices. His office is the big set of double doors at the far end of the corridor the elevator lets you out in, next to Branson's and General Collins office."

Ross gave Shepard a nod. "I'm going outside to smoke, I'll see you there."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Actually, that sounds like a good idea – a cigarette, that is."

The big man nodded amiably, and Solez rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine, but don't be late. Dragunov is already bitchy today."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Shepard learned a bit about both Major-Captain Ross and Major of Marines Solez while waiting for Dragunov.

Ross was the commanding officer of the DACT Brigade Alpha, the more senior of the DACT strike groups. Alpha was split up between various commands, with over three hundred DACT under his direct command. He'd been a purely surface soldier until eleven years ago, when he had to take operational command during a disastrous altercation with pirates out beyond New Caleston, and spent two years taking space command classes as a result. Although a bit older, he could still keep up with his DACT if he piloted his battle-suit well enough, and his battle group boasted a good deal of boarding experience.

Solez was distantly related to the de la Camara House of Terra Nova, not enough to be accorded the name but more than enough to be technically ranked as nobility. Unlike Shepard and Ross, while she was the CO of the Medea battlegroup, she didn't have naval rank and a naval captain actually commanded her ships. Medea specialized in taking down slaver groups and striking from a distance, using a variation on the FTL missiles Shepard saw the volus use once. She was a Fury – a biotic close quarters specialist who used her abilities to improve her speed and strength.

With five minutes to spare, they entered Dragunov's office.

Dragunov's office was spacious, but extremely spartan – flat gray thin carpets, four stainless steel shelves full of tactical manuals, datapads, and SA logistics books, a pair of steel planters each holding a spray of Russian sage, and a single large haptic display on the wall. Aside from three chairs, his steel desk, and his steel framed chair, the office was empty.

By the time Dragunov showed up – trailed by a pair of harassed, tired looking aides and glowering in all directions – the three majors were quietly talking about what to expect. Dragunov flung the doors of his office open and stalked to his seat.

He glanced at the aides. "Go file all that with Records and make sure Ahern doesn't get in trouble for sexual harassment or piss off some Commissar with his damned mouth. This briefing is above your clearance."

The senior aide, a lieutenant, nodded, depositing a stack of datapads on Dragunov's desk before they both departed, shutting the doors behind them. The snap-crack of a security field sounded a moment later, along with a whiff of ozone.

The Fleet Master sat forward, tenting his fingers, his hard and craggy face tense. His accent, usually muted, was thicker, lending an exotic tone to his words. "The three of you are the tip of the spear on this incident for a reason. The media is going insane over this mess, and yet we aren't dealing with good intelligence. If we go charging into that region of space with a full fleet – which is in bad shape – I can almost guarantee some ships are going to get blindsided and shot out of space in short order."

He grunted. "Given the histronics of the media over the losses we've already taken, the Minister of Defense and the High Admiral want to minimize our own casualties."

Ross snorted. "Big of them."

Dragunov's eyes narrowed. "Yes, quiet." He tapped a series of data-pads on his desk. "In the short term the amount of damage these revolutionaries can do to the Systems Alliance is negligible in material amounts, it's mostly political and economic. That's why our initial response is going to look 'busy' but mostly limit itself to your groups until you take out the leaders and gather more intel on what exactly is happening."

He tapped a control on his desk, the large haptic display on the wall lighting up. "Intel is fragmentary and sometimes conflicting – most of what we have is sightings by civilian ships and a handful of engagements between the dreadnought and a pack of crazy Corsair captains harrying it." He highlighted a group of systems near the Traverse. "The four admirals are somewhere in here, split into four task forces of about ten ships each – a few cruisers, with destroyers and frigates for escorts. Each force is about as strong as a battlegroup, on paper. Keep in mind that based on the intel we have, these are light cruisers – not battle cruisers. The only heavy unit they have is that dreadnought."

He tapped another control, and more systems illuminated, along with a yellow line. "Racek and his dreadnought seem to be on a course towards Horizon. Right now, that colony is a mess – the pullout of investors means half the colony ships landed without any financial backing. They don't have any system defenses aside from a reinforced escort, along with about a dozen fighters operating off the HE3 station in the system. It's a worthless target from a military standpoint, and the fact that it's not technically a signer of the SA Charter means it's a non-starter politically – he may expect us not to respond."

Finally, a sphere of space lit up in red. "Balak is somewhere in here, we think – he's operating with a least two cruisers and a handful of frigates and raider vessels. The admirals have been picking fights, and Racek has been blowing up things, but we don't have a good idea what Balak is up to yet, and that worries us."

He cut off the projector. "Tasking and flight plans are already being pushed to your command vessels. The rest of this briefing is to go over your questions and develop operational plans."

Major Ross was the first to speak. "Why us? Why not send larger forces?"

Dragunov's expression tightened. "I didn't want to say this in front of the entire command staff, and I expect you three to keep your mouths shut on this. The AIS has reached the conclusion that someone outside the Hegemony, most likely Aria or P., is financing this revolution. It might be cover for them to take action against the Alliance. Aria has never been happy with us since we shut down most of her slaving operations, and won't buy her eezo. And until now, P. has been neutral towards us, but the recent assassination attempt on Shepard here indicates that might not be the case any more. We can't afford to get into a scrap with either of these warlords."

Dragunov leaned back. "Therefore, our best bet is to take out each force before they know they're even being hunted. The admirals are not coordinating their forces, Major Ross. If you can take out one or preferably two of them before they realize they're being picked off, we can mop up the other two. Boarding gives us our best chance at finding out who is behind this mess, as well."

He turned to Solez. "Racek is a bigger issue, but his dreadnought is old and not well maintained, and he's never commanded a ship before. We're fairly certain, based on eyewitness reports, that his frigate screen is only five or six frigates, with no outriders. Based on that, and the shitty abilities of batarian sensor packages, if you catch him at long range from behind you should be able to cripple his ship before he can even begin to respond."

Solez grimaced. "And his ability to stop biotics?"

Dragunov shook his head. "Racek is good at stopping biotics – but he's mostly dealt with salarian, batarian and human conventional biotics, not Furies. He's got no noted skills in CQB and tends to rely on sniping and maneuver tactics to overwhelm biotics."

Solez nodded slowly. "Neither of which he can use inside a dreadnought."

Dragunov's expression eased. "Exactly. Capturing a batarian dreadnought would be a big boon to the AIS...and after a quick study, we'll even give it back to the Hegemony and show everyone we're big boys."

He turned to Shepard. "Frankly, you have the hardest mission, but given you tracked down Saren, this shouldn't be nearly as bad. Whatever Balak is up to, he's trying to keep quiet. You have a stealth frigate in your battlegroup and the most experience in using stealth tactics. Once you localize him, your Kyle-class torpedoes should be able to smash whatever ships he's using in a single blow. Racek is the only one in this mess worth capturing alive, if possible – Balak isn't."

Shepard nodded. "We have no idea what he might be up to, sir? That's going to make it hard to track him."

Dragunov shook his head, leonine features tightening in frustration. "Unfortunately, no. So far, the only thing he's done is kill Imperial Guard types and blow up batarian stations – he's raided six so far, mostly looting high explosives and fusion charges."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "That sounds just great, sir."

Dragunov shrugged, picking up three pads from a neat stack on his desk, handing one of them to each of the majors. "Here is all the accumulated sightings, intel, and Corsair reports we have. Again – Ross, localize their forces, take out the leadership and then fall back. We'll clean up whatever is left behind with the force under Hackett. Don't bother trying to capture the admirals. Just kill them and get out. Solez, cripple the dreadnought, take Racek alive if possible – if not, plant scuttling charges and open distance. Shepard, kill Balak and blow up his ships, and if there's too much heat just drop Balak and get away."

He glanced around. "Further questions?"

Ross shrugged. "Just one, really, sir. If this is a stunt of Aria or P. and they get involved, what do we do?"

Dragunov's fist closed. "Fall back immediately and notify us via multiple comm buoys. Then it will be up to the Ministers and the President on what reaction to take."

Shepard coughed. "I also have an overlapping assignment in the region, but I haven't had a chance to coordinate with the Council and see what progress has been made, sir. The president said you might know, sir."

The Fleet Master nodded. "Yes, I know." He paused. "Major Ross, Major Solez, this part of the conversation is above even your security clearances. I'll be available if you have other questions. Dismissed."

The two glanced at each other and Shepard before standing and saluting, departing a moment later. Dragunov waited until the doors closed before continuing.

"We had a conversation with Udina involving this – so far, the quarians have turned up nothing, neither has the STG. The Broker is in communication again, says that he took out this Okeer person for being indoctrinated – and claims our station in the Lenal system had also fallen to indoctrination."

Shepard winced. "Fuck, that's not good. I suppose he didn't comment on trying to get me and Liara – not to mention Udina – killed, sir?"

The man's face gave the faint impression of a smile. "His agent claimed they were paid to assist in getting the assassins on the station, nothing more – and that it was just business. The President is not particularly impressed with this line of explanation and Lord Baron Jonah Ashland is demanding reparations for his destroyed facility. For now, we're assuming that the Broker nipped a problem in the bud for us at cost."

She nodded. "Can't say I'm sad Okeer is dead – he was definitely involved with Saren and probably behind those horrible cross-breed things we fought on Virmire and the Citadel." She sighed. "One other question – why is a high-caste batarian lord working with mid-caste admirals and a low-caste biotic to revolt, sir? Not that I'm a batarian culture expert, but what I know about them makes that sound more than a little off."

Dragunov gave a weary nod. "We have been asking ourselves the same questions. Given that we only know what the Hegemon and his aides have said – the Emperor himself has not made a statement – and that these batarians are attacking Alliance citizens, it's a moot point. Hopefully if we capture Racek we can find out what is really going on."

She nodded. "Yes, sir. That's all I need."

He gestured to the door. "Then you are dismissed, Major. Good hunting."

She stood and saluted, and left his offices.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Battlegroup Chiron had nine hours to prepare to ship out, and Shepard found herself immersed in work once more. She had a briefing with the battlegroup CO's and BDO's, briefing them on the bits of information she had.

Balak was a Glorious batarian biotic. The batarians were able to 'create' biotics from scratch by using a virally induced nerve disorder called Girifon's Disease, which caused mutation in the batarian nervous system, and then injecting them with eezo slurry and a cocktail of various drugs. The weaker varieties of batarian biotics, Honored and Fated, were roughly on par with the average human biotic – a bit weaker in terms of power and ability to last a long time, but a bit quicker on the draw.

But some batarians responded well to the treatment, and were deliberately overloaded. This tended to kill the batarian in question quickly – most didn't live more than two to three years after the treatment began – but it produced a nightmarishly strong biotic that could overpower even asari matriarchs for short periods of time. Glorious batarians were some of the most lethal biotics in the galaxy, and the one Shepard had fought before during her RRU days had nearly killed her and all of Neutron single-handedly.

She told her officers what she knew – Glorious batarians were strong but tired easily, were immune to most biotic suppression devices, and had poor skills in most cases. They relied on sheer power and force to produce results, not skill or technique, and few of them knew any advanced biotic abilities. That being said, a Glorious batarian could lift a MAKO and crush it in midair or bounce mortar rounds if prepared.

Going to battle against the Fist of Khar'shan was likely to be a rough experience as well. Unlike the State Guard, the Fist used heavy armor, powerful shotguns, and a mix of battle-drugs and powerful stimulants to boost their effectiveness of their troops in urban and close-quarters combat. She warned the BDO's in particular that Fist units went after officers first and for them to remove rank markings from their armor before heading into battle.

While she was busy briefing her forces, the rest of the team was hard at work in other areas. Liara was busily preparing probe packages, Tali was working on making sure the engines were up to spec, Joker was pulled into review batarian tactics with the fighter wing, and Pressly rode herd on the ops teams for the entire battlegroup in the best ECM patterns to use. Colms personally reviewed weapons packages for each ship and provided updated torpedo and missile settings.

After snatching a quick five hours of sleep and making sure everyone was aboard, Shepard gave the order to cast off, and the battlegroup moved out in good order. Battlegroups Medea and Ajax headed out at the same time, and as they approached the relay, they got final tasking from the Fleet Master himself.

"Shepard, this is Fleet Master Dragunov. Our latest intelligence shows that Balak's ships have been sighted nearing an important Eldfell-Ashland refinery complex on New Louisiana, an outlying corporate world about two jumps from New Edo. This complex manufactures and processes resonant magnetic iron slurry used in our matter/antimatter missiles and torpedoes and is extremely vital. Right now, the place is guarded by a heavy mercenary unit, the Firestorm, as well as a few members of the Emberguard – the house knights of Ashland."

Dragunov's voice lowered slightly. "We don't have a good fix on Balak's location, but it's very likely he'll try to hit that facility. If you're quick, you can maybe catch the stupid bastard there and kill him – if so, you can reinforce the other two operations."

She nodded, folding her hands behind her back. "Understood, sir."

He gave her a thin, hard smile. "Don't fuck this one up, Shepard – command out."

She sighed, and then tapped the 1MC. "All hands, set battle condition 2SR. Prepare for relay jump in five." She clicked off then tapped the comm circuit for the pilots. "Joker, bring us into the Malethon relay."

She turned to Traynor. "Orders to the battlegroup – formation _Ocean Fist._ Frigates load missiles for maximum rate of fire, destroyers prep for massed fire on when I give the order. Inform them that an Eldfell-Ashland refinery may be under attack and we'll need to prep for immediate combat once we exit the relay."

She then sat back in her chair, eyes fixed on the combat plot. "Joker, take us in." The bridge lighting faded to red, as the sound of the battle stations alarm rang through the bridge.


	28. Chapter 28: Zaeed Massani

**A/N:** _As I have said before, one asteroid? Fucking amateurs. Real terrorists use two! _

_Nothing else needs to be said. Enjoy._

_Also: The orkiest Mass Effect story, **Silly but Killy**, was updated again today! If you are a real 40k fan you should check it out. _

* * *

_"I fought with that crazy broad enough times to tell you was a right hellcat in a fight. God, what I wouldn't have given to get her in the sack once. I saw her kill a squint once by backhanding him with an omni while killing two more with that boomstick of hers. Guddamned beautiful, made me hard just watching."  
_

_\- Zaeed Massani, in a private interview with Emily Wong, 2185_

* * *

Shepard clenched the arms of her command chair as the battlegroup erupted from the mass relay in a storm of blue lighting, the ship shuddering a bit as the rest of the fleet emerged behind it. The ops plot was already marred with a handful of blips, red and green. In the distance, explosions and criss-crossing flashes of GARDIAN fire rent the darkness of space.

Colms was acting as the plot coordinator, standing at the main weapons panel. "Contacts bearing zero zero five mark two tac eleven. Initial scans show … make that nine enemy contacts. Awaiting classification from science."

The ops tech next to him began assigning trackers to it, even as the dull whump of the kinetic barriers coming up rang through the hull. Shepard nodded. "Traynor, orders to the fleet, engage formation and prepare. Colms, load a single Kyle-class torpedo and the rest our tubes with standards. Liara, what we got?"

The asari bit her lip, hands moving over her console much more rapidly than she'd done when she first started. "There is a heavily damaged Alliance light cruiser limping towards the gas giant, and two more in knife-fight range with three light batarian cruisers. Four frigates, two destroyers and an additional cruiser have altered course to intercept us. Five raider class vessels are in orbit of the planet, along with considerable wreckage – hull signatures indicate they have destroyed several other Alliance ships."

Traynor spoke. "We're getting distress signals and calls for assistance from the planet's surface – the refinery is definitely under attack. I'm trying to patch through now, ma'am."

Shepard exhaled. "Take us in, flank. Traynor, instruct captain von Khar to take his destroyer and the frigates and assist the light cruisers. The other two destroyers – have them follow us in and we'll take the ones coming at us. Deploy our fighters as well."

The next few minutes were a chaotic dance. The batarian cruisers attacking the two Alliance ships immediately realized they had a problem, with a battle-cruiser and three heavy destroyers entering the system. Spraying missiles at the already battered Alliance light cruisers, they turned in wide, opening arcs to face her ships, even as von Khar brought his destroyer up high and unloaded his missiles. The frigates soared in, firing wildly to draw batarian fire.

At long range, it took almost two minutes for the missiles to interact. Von Khar's ships took a few minor hits, but one spray of missiles blasted a batarian cruiser in half, burning fragments of armor tumbling wildly away from a fading fireball littered with bits of metal and tiny, spinning figures. The remaining half of the ship slowly came to a stop, engines pulsing weakly to hold station, fires blazing from the ragged, torn midsection.

The second missile salvo tore down the second batarian ship's shields before blowing apart the engines of the ship, sending it into an unpowered skid. The frigates coming in hot and fast raked down its sides with heavy mass accelerator fire, blasting sections of hull away before von Khar landed a direct hit on the bridge. The cruiser came apart in chunks of melting, fragmented metals and debris.

Meanwhile, the Kazan stormed ahead, towards the main force of batarian ships, and Shepard leaned back in her seat. "Colms, fire a spray of standard missiles, then fire a single Kyle torpedo at the center incoming cruiser. Pressly, full ECM, reinforce forward kinetic barrier."

The missiles shot out, and the batarian frigates accelerated, moving in a cross pattern to try and break up the volley. That brought them closer to the cruiser, a perfectly sound tactical ploy to stop missile fire. Shepard smiled in anticipation as the the lights dimmed a moment aboard the Kazan, the FTL torpedo launcher disgorging the massive Kyle-class torpedo. Barely three seconds later a gargantuan ball of black and blue flames and coruscating energies erupted in the middle of the batarian ships.

Two frigates on the edge of the blast shattered like glass, coming apart in multiple explosions. The other ships were simply vaporized as the destabilizing neutronium equalized and burning plasma radiated across space, and alarms rang out from Liara's station, which she silenced quickly.

The Kazan shook heavily in the blast wave, and Shepard steadied herself by gripping the railing next to her chair. "Damage report."

A moment later Tali's voice came across the comm. "Minor power fluctuations. Some EMP discharge is affecting our shielding, nothing major."

She nodded. "Liara?"

Liara was examining her sensors, pausing to speak to one of her officers before shaking her head, a sad note in her voice. "The batarian ships are simply…gone. The two outlying frigates are so heavily irradiated there can be no survivors, and the other ships...I am not even detecting materials equal to ten percent of their mass. Extremely heavy radiation emissions were generated from the explosion itself – nothing harmful for one exposure, but hardly healthy for anything much closer than we were, Sara."

Colms sniffed from the weapons panel. "Live fire test of the Kyle completed. As promised, Major, it works _perfectly_."

Shepard grunted. Taking out the rough equivalent of a battlegroup with a single shot was certainly impressive, but she'd withhold judgment on the weapon until a more serious battle came along. "Traynor, fleet status."

The lieutenant's English accent was muted."Captain Jericho is assisting the Alliance cruisers. Captain von Khar is requesting orders – one cruiser is broken in half, the other destroyed. The one broken in half probably has surviving batarians aboard, but is suffering from loss of control and has no weapons."

Shepard scowled. "Is that broken cruiser transmitting surrender messages?"

Traynor checked. "...no ma'am. But given the command section of the ship is...well, gone...they may not be able to do so."

Shepard's voice hardened. "He is to fire into the ship until they are all dead."

Traynor paled but nodded. "Y-yes ma'am. Also, incoming transmission from the ground, ma'am."

Shepard pulled up a haptic screen from her command plinth. "Route it to me, Lieutenant."

The screen flickered with static, until a battered, grim man appeared in view. His hair was cut short, graying brown, and his face was heavily scarred. A segment of his face was built-up and waxy looking, centered around a white, glassy looking eye, his other eye narrowed and filled with rage. His strong features were battered, and his blood-red armor splashed with blood here and there. His voice had a curious, almost thuggish accent to it. Behind him was nothing but blank steel walls.

"It's about guddamned time some backup go here. Did you fucking _walk_ here, flygirl?"

Shepard didn't know whether to be amused or insulted, settling for neither. "This is Major-Commander Sara Shepard in command of battlegroup Chiron, here to render assistance. I need a sitrep and to know who I'm talking to."

The man puffed out his chest, his good eye narrowing. A series of explosions sounded in the distance, and he frowned before answering.

"Zaeed Massani, sweetheart, in charge of the mercenary company Firestorm. And the situation is that hell spilled its guddamned hand-basket all over us. There's at least a division of fucking squints down here shooting up everything, and if the stupid bastards manage to reach the refinery and blow it up, most of the colony will be wiped. They've got ships in orbit hitting us – the refinery has GTS defenses but their getting the shit kicked out of them, and we can't advance to take out the fucking ground forces with shit falling our heads."

Shepard nodded. "I've got a regiment with me. We'll be landing MAKO tanks and battle-suits shortly, along with marines and DACT in drop pods. I need locations for orbital strikes to slow down the advance if you have them."

The mercenary captain nodded, turning to one side, shouting for someone named Reyn in a shattering bellow to tighten his lines. Turning back to face her, he only grinned. "We'll shoot the target coordinates up to you." He squinted at her. "Your supposed to be some kind of big-shot Spectre type, ain't you? You coming down to join the fun?"

She snorted. "Might as well, Mr. Massani. Hold your position. Kazan out." She clicked off. "Target the orbiting ships with the main guns and take them out."

Colms nodded. "Preparing firing solution."

She turned to Traynor. "Message to the fleet : engage orbital enemies then standby for ground deployment. I want our fighters to provide air support for the drop. Marines are to deploy using drop pods and land within the refinery boundaries to reinforce existing forces. Destroyers are to orbit and provide orbital bombardment support; frigates will remain in high polar and provide over-watch in case any more batarians show up."

As Traynor began to transmit, the Kazan shuddered with the shock of firing off the main guns, and she watched the lightly armored raider ships splinter under the heavy fire. The first shot blasted completely through one of the frigate-sized ships to smash into the next one, blowing off it's engines and sending it spinning through the atmosphere, burning as it went. The other three attempted to break orbit, only to catch mass slugs through the center-line, blasting through them cleanly and blowing one into little more than burning shreds of metal.

Shepard frowned. The Fist usually had better space-side support, these ships fought like standard State Guard units – or even slavers. She shrugged, turning to Pressly. "Commander, you have the deck and the conn. Bring us into orbit and prepare for combat drop. Provide bombardment with the main guns and support the drop with our fighter wing."

Pressly nodded, and Shepard headed to her quarters. She was in the process of taking off her uniform to get into her armor when the door slid open and Liara entered. "Am I not coming with you?"

Shepard shook her head. "Not this time, nor is Tali." She gave Liara a look. "It's not that I don't think you can handle yourself...but this is supposedly the Fist we're fighting – these boys are seriously bad news. You aren't ready for that shit yet."

Liara folded her arms. "And if you run into this 'Balak' down there, will you not need my help?"

Shepard pulled open the armor locker, pulling out the Spectre armor. "I've taken a Glorious before. It was by the skin of my teeth, but I wasn't half as good then as I am now. I'm more worried about not being able to focus if I'm busy making sure you're okay, Liara."

Liara suddenly remembered Ahern's sneering confidence that it would be distractions from Liara that got Shepard killed, and shuddered. "I...I will be monitoring carefully. Please be careful."

Shepard smiled, and nodded. "I'm going to be. No rage-punching charges this time, promise."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Landing her forces took another twenty minutes. Based on telemetry scans and reports from the Firestorm mercs, the situation was ugly.

New Louisiana was not a large colony. There was a starport and warehouses, with a few civilian facilities, bars, apartments and like snuggled up to it, a set of heavy cargo tracks leading to the refinery area, and the refineries and storage tanks themselves. All of this was built up against the gentle slopes of hills at the foot of a range of iron and bauxite bearing mountains that sported a few mining rigs and bore-holes.

A second, smaller settlement for surveyors and security forces had already been overrun and put to the torch by the advancing batarian forces. Ground defenses – mechs and GARDIAN towers – had been suppressed as well, but the batarians had taken losses.

The terrain around the main colony was not promising – it was rocky, rugged, and literally filled with cover. Heavy iron bearing rocks made long-range scanning impossible, and the GTS defense array was on the outskirts of the colony, protected by high walls and embankments. Unfortunately, it was also well within range of a set of low hills that sported heavy cover of their own, and the batarians were assaulting that point with the clear objective of taking out the GTS guns.

The fighting had reached the outskirts of the town, the Firestorm mercenary company deploying heavy JOTUN mechs to fight the pair of AUGMEK battle-suits the batarians had brought along. AUGMEKS were the batarian knock-offs of salarian Shieldbreakers – cybernetically plugged into a robotic body, the AUGMEK also cut out a section of the batarian's brain to provide a command-and-control system for the battle-suit

Almost three thousand batarians faced less than a thousand mercenaries and some three hundred Ashland security guards, plus a dozen Knights of the Emberguard. Thus far, the batarians were winning. The Firestorm used lots of flamethrowers, inferno grenades and explosives, stalling the main batarian thrust with their tactics, but losses were beginning to mount. The commander of the Emberguard apparently had orders directly from the Ashlands not to engage outside of the refinery, so it was up to the mercenaries to hold the batarian charges off.

Rather than risk her marines in open combat, Shepard split her forces. Her normal marines she dropped in drop-pods behind the mercenary lines to stiffen the defenses, under the command of von Khar's senior NCO, given that Cole was sporting an injured leg from some stunt he'd gotten up to while on leave.

She loaded up her N marines, AIS snipers and some of the more experienced soldiers into the MAKOs and, along with her battle-suits, waited to drop behind the enemy lines. She wanted to drop after the bombardment from the Kazan and strafing by her fighters, to maximize confusion.

The initial bombardment went very well – the batarians on the ground had no idea their own ships were gone. Sixteen kinetic shots blasted their ranks, incinerating hundred off batarians and spraying flecks of rubble in all directions, wounding and crippling more. Fighters followed the initial strike, strafing the center of the mass hoping to kill officers, but two fighters were hit with ground missiles and she ordered the fighter commander to withdraw.

The kinetic strikes had heavily damaged the batarian force, but she couldn't sit in high orbit and bombard them to death – whoever was in charge reacted by moving his men directly towards the refinery. They would take increased casualties, but there were still enough to overwhelm the facility, and the accuracy of the guns in atmosphere was not enough to ensure a shot might not accidentally hit the refinery.

Instead, she ordered her marines to drop, getting into the MAKO and landing with her own team – Lee Riley, N5 soldiers, AIS snipers and her DACT.

The MAKO fell through the atmosphere, juddering with acceleration, as she sat in the back. She slapped on her helmet and checked her Valkyrie rifle, glancing around the cabin. "Alright, keep the formation tight and hard. MAKO's will circle the batarian force, firing for suppression. DACTs will come with my unit and carve through the middle while the battle-suits cover us with heavy fire."

She exhaled. "These are Fist, not State troops – they won't break easily. When we hit the ground and get out of the MAKO, get in cover and follow me in. If we're lucky, we can find and take out the batarian officer in charge of this assault – break him and the rest will begin to panic."

Lee Riley nodded, putting her own helmet on and lifting her Typhoon. "You say follow you in ma'am – what are you going to do?"

Shepard smiled behind her helmet. "You'll see."

Riley sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that."

The MAKO impacted the ground with a heaving clunk, and Shepard kicked open the back hatch. "Move, move!"

Rolling from the vehicle, she dashed out, eyes flickering around. The terrain around the facility was broken and irregular, dotted with heavy boulders and shelves of rock. Scattered batarian and human corpses littered the ground, along with huge swathes of smoking black scorched areas.

She had told Pressly to fire one more ground strike, as they landed, and she sought cover immediately before it hit.

As she rolled into cover, the scant clouds above were shouldered aside as six mass impactor rounds tore through the sky, slamming down in the middle of the batarian force. Screams and shrieks rang out as torn fragments of flesh – arms, legs, bodies – rained down and were flung about, the shockwave nearly knocking one her battle-suits off its feet. The batarian force was split, the center of it simply gone, and Shepard leapt from cover.

"Units, charge!"

Even as the battle-suits opened up with missile fire and her DACT soldiers shot up in the air, she acted. Moving through the kanquess to land at several locations, she fired short bursts, two at each stop, before doing another charge to a different location.

Her first burst took down three batarians, her second caught one in the head, spraying his blood all over his associates, and her third blew away three. She stood on an outcropping of stone, highlighted by the slowly setting sun, Spectre cape flapping in the wind, and triggering her suit speakers, laughed.

"Soldiers of the Fist, you've come to die."

More than one batarian faced her, recognizing her very voice, and a hundred enraged screams rang out. "The Butcher! Kill her!"

She merely snickered as she kanquessed away from the storm of shots that lanced out and blasted apart the rock she'd stood on, coming up just inside the batarian lines. She lashed out with her omni-tool, decapitating one batarian even while her other hand sprayed shots from the Valkyrie, cutting down two more.

A batarian swung at her with a concussion gauntlet, a move she ducked under. Using one of Ahern's tricks, she scored his armor with her omni-blade and then triggered a plasma blast, the hot material shoved inside the batarian's thick armor and cooking him from the inside out. She flashed away in another kanquess to avoid more fire, this time landing on the far side of the enemy lines, swapping her assault rifle for her sniper rifle. She grinned as she saw more than a few batarians scrambling away in fear, then frowned.

Something was _off_.

Three thousand Fist soldiers should have chewed this place to pieces. The batarians she saw all wore the signature heavy black armor with white trim of the Fist, but they weren't using Fist weapons – or fighting like true Fist of Khar'shan soldiers. Fist soldiers never showed fear, even in the face of death.

To her right, she saw the MAKOs open fire on the batarian AUGMEKs, cannon shots staggering the hulking cyborgs before blowing one into burning pieces. The other tried to right itself, getting off a shot with its mini-gun that damaged one MAKO heavily, but the other one accelerated, ramming it at top speed and slamming it against a heavy rock shelf. The AUGMEK bent backwards before coming apart at the waist in a gory spray of blood and hydraulics, the MAKO grinding its wheels over the remains.

Shepard shook her head and tapped her comm. "MAKO 2, who is driving?"

The strong voice of Lieutenant Cole answered. "Leg is still wonky from that ball game, so I thought I'd show them our big blue style, ma'am."

She chuckled. "Good job, Cole." She paused, glancing over the fight, and nodded to herself, tapping her comm even as she ducked into cover. "Lee, now!"

The batarian lines were a mess, and not ready when Lee Riley and her N-unit charged them with heavy machine guns. At the same time, her four battle-suits, having dealt with the batarian flank, opened fire from the opposite side. Dozens of batarians fell to scything heavy fire, and the Agamemnon battle-suit in the lead cut down more with the mini-gun, stomping about and kicking batarians that got to close to it into paste.

Shepard shook her head, tapping her comm. "Riley, these bastards can't be Fist soldiers."

Riley's answering comm was wryly sarcastic. "Maybe we've just gotten more badass as we got older, ma'am."

A second round of missiles from the battle-suits lanced out, and the edges of the batarian line wavered and broke. The Firestorm mercs, seeing the enemy force halted, stormed from their own secure locations, firing as they went, and the marines she'd dropped to reinforce them followed. A storm of fire rang out, catching the batarians by surprise, hundreds falling in the first unexpected salvo as they'd taken cover facing Shepard's units, leaving themselves open. She could see a larger batarian with high-caste markings screaming orders, and she carefully sighted in on him. This one was acting much like a Fist officer would.

She thanked Ahern mentally once again as she took the batarian officer's head off with her shot, watching him slump to the ground and the soldiers next to him panic.

Shepard stayed in cover and picked off batarians with her sniper rifle. Normally, she'd be the first on up in the mix of fighting, but Ahern's words about not losing command of the fight were foremost in her mind – plus, she was trying to see if she could find and identify this Balak. It helped that each time she shot down an officer, the batarians became more disorganized, but she couldn't identify whoever was giving orders – they were smart enough to not have rank insignia, and she figured he must be wearing a helmet.

It took another five minutes before whoever was in charge of the batarian force to realize he was losing his ass off and to try another tactic. Before Shepard could see what happened, a string of explosions rang out in the middle of the fight, and Lee gave an enraged scream as one of the N5's went down, bleeding and smoking.

Shepard dropped her sniper, bursting into a kanquess. Batarians were flinging grenades with abandon while a pair of big batarians in the back were putting together some kind of device. She couldn't make it out from here, but it looked explosive.

Shepard wasted no time, calling on her biotics, hurling the widest push she could muster, one that left her feeling dizzy for a second. A line of batarians fifty feet wide stumbled back, and she grinned as more than one dropped armed grenades, which exploded a second later, tearing holes in the line. She followed up with the biggest, hardest blob of warp-fire she could throw, feeling her head spin and her vision blur as the blob of blue fire washed over the main batarian force in slow motion before bursting, incinerating at least five and scattering more.

It gave her people time to reset themselves from the grenade blasts, and she heard Riley barking orders, imposing discipline and calm. As her own forces recovered, Shepard moved ahead, pulling out her ODIN and firing steadily, launching a drone to cover her advance. Lee pulled her men back, carrying the wounded N5, while she saw Massani himself stomp forward, pausing to empty his flamethrower into the batarian line before shrugging out of the harness and pulling out a heavily customized Avenger rifle in matte black.

Shepard blasted two more batarians, dodging counter-fire, and threw herself behind a low shelf of rock. Massani tumbled next to her a moment later. "You've got some damned good moves, sweetheart. Could have used a bloodthirsty bitch like you on Gravalax."

She snorted. "Charming." She popped up, flinging another warp strike at the batarian line, sending up two more of the Fist into crackling blue death, before ducking to avoid fire. She gritted her teeth at the pain in her nervous system and glanced over at him. "Ideas? I'd just have bombarded the stupid bastards from orbit, but they were too close for me to be sure we wouldn't miss. I'm running low on biotic power already, and I don't have enough men to rout them directly."

The aged merc adjusted something on his rifle – Shepard noted it had the name 'Jessie' in bold red letters on the stock – and the barrel lengthened. A pop up scope flipped out of the top of the receiver, and Massani shrugged. "It's the Fist. Anything but a good old fashioned slog is just gonna end up in tears. My boys aren't hard enough to go line to line with 'em, and you've just about torn your own up doing that."

She shook her head. "Yeah, well, I had no choice. Most of my marines aren't hard enough either. But I'm not so sure these are real Fist – or at least, I don't think most of them are."

He narrowed his eyes, sighting in before firing several times. "Stupid jackasses, milling about...yeah, you might be right about that, Shepard. Fist usually isn't this fucking pussified." He grunted, then cursed, firing again. "Shit! Rocket unit!"

She winced as a rocket lanced out of the batarian lines, crushing one of her battle suits, and commed. "MAKOs, full suppressive fire!"

The sound of guns boomed across the landscape, and she shook her head. "The hell are they even after? Not slaves, I'm guessing. You think they're trying to blow the facility?"

Massani grimaced. "Shit no. The guddamned squints could have done that from orbit. No, they wanted something else, but I don't know what. The stupid bastards hit the outlying security facility a lot heavier than this, and most of them already left the planet before you got here. They were looking for something – no telling where the rest of them went off to. I figure if we don't wrap this up quick, they'll get clean away."

Shepard grimaced. "Great." She paused, then sighed. "I'm going to do a biotic charge to the other side, behind their line again, and drop my grenade belt before charging back out. When it goes off, I need your people to fire everything they've got – if we can break this line they have, my tanks and battle-suits can go in and finish them, I think. Preferably before they finish whatever the shit they're trying to put together back there."

Massani gave her a curious look, then nodded. "Crazy, suicidal, and bloody. I fucking like it." He lifted his rifle. "Jessie and I will cover you – keep an eye out for a big batarian with a crimson collar – he's the leader of this pack, I think."

She nodded, tapping her omni. "Lee, have the unit charge on the signal. The mercs will be coming in from the other side, so use short bursts and angle down your shots."

Lee's voice was tense. "Signal?"

Shepard smiled. "Remember Horizon?"

Lee started screaming. "No no no no!" Shepard only killed the link. "Ah, memories." Massani gave her a curious look, and she sketched him a salute, grinning behind her helmet. "See you." She flung herself over the lip of stone and erupted into a kanquess, emerging in a nova on the far side.

Batarians were flung in all directions from her arrival, even as she quick-armed her grenade belt and dropped it. She paused to fire off the biggest smear field she could before managing to kanquess back out.

The smear field jammed a good many of the batarian weapons, forcing them to clear, and none of them saw the belt of grenades until all ten of them went off. She'd taken Ahern's advice and removed some of the hi-ex from her load-out, but seven of them were still the high explosive variety, and the blast was augmented by shards of rock scattered in all directions.

A good sixty batarians were incinerated, sending a shock through the line. Seconds later, a storm of fire from both sides tore through their ranks, even as Shepard erupted into the lines again, firing her ODIN and flashing through the kanquess as fast as she could. She took more than a few hits, cursing as one shot punched completely through her armor to hit her in the thigh, but retaliated with a shot from her ODIN that took the shooter's head and upper torso off in a cone of gore.

She placed two shots into one batarian soldier, blasting apart his head in a spray of blood, and then charged aside to evade an enraged soldier with a energy maul. She hit him with a lift and then a push, knocking him back into his own lines, the maul savagely smashing into a third batarian and killing him. She flung warpfire over the heap of fallen bodies, watching them thrash and scream before emptying the ODIN into the mass.

She paused, focusing to bring up her biotic barrier again, and that gave a batarian an opening. He charged her, firing, and shots pinged off her barrier as she turned to face him. She channeled biotic energy to her free hand and pushed off, driving her fist directly into his face. Armaplast armor splintered under the impact and he gave a howl as fragments of his helmet were driven into his eyes, a second before Shepard placed her hand on his chest and triggered her omni-tool, engulfing him in plasma.

Two more came at her, and she found herself laughing as she snapped between them with yet another charge, pulling the barrel of her ODIN around in a tight arc, firing as she went, and dropping both with a single motion.

_There is no way in fucking hell these are Fist soldiers,_ she thought.

She ducked, her instincts screaming, and a batarian came flying over her head an a leaping tackle that missed. Before he could get to his feet, she kicked him in the face, augmenting the kick with biotics, and he screamed in agony as her armored boot smashed in his skull.

Another batarian charged, this one already bloody and wounded, a heavy constriction gauntlet on his arm, glowing with power. Sneering beneath her helmet, she wrapped her free hand in warpfire and caught his punch, the Spectre armor taking the hit easily, warp energy eating the gauntlet right off his arm to sear his hand down to the bone. Even as his four eyes widened in agony, she slammed her head into his, crunching through his nose in a spray of blood.

She spun him around, releasing him just to hit him with a lift and a push, sending him flying. A moment later she flung another pulse of warpfire, grinning as the biotic detonation blew him and several batarians around him to pieces.

Massani was howling – or laughing, she wasn't sure – and he cut a bloody swathe through the batarians with his battle rifle. The rounds it fired were some kind of explosive, and he shot four batarians in a row, sending each one flying away with a bloody crater in their chest. One survived, charging at the man with a shotgun, but the mercenary caught him with his cybernetic arm, lifting the batarian up like a child before ramming him down into the earth, snapping his spine with almost casual ease.

Three more opened fire on him, but the rounds pinged impotently off his heavy armor. Masanni's face curled into a sneer as he tossed a pair of grenades at them while spinning out of the way of more incoming fire. A heavy blast of white, almost painfully bright flames erupted, turning the batarians into jiggling, screaming torches, and Massani paused long enough to put a burst into two of them. He walked over calmly to the third, lighting a cigar on the batarian's thrashing, burning form before stomping his head into paste.

Massani roared out a command. "Firestorm! It's time to **BURN**!"

The mercs triggered their flamethrowers again, lances of bright fire searing the batarian ranks, even as more heavy mini-gun fire came in from the battle-suits, and Shepard charged through their ranks again, flashing in and out of the kanquess in blue flashes punctuated with the roaring blasts of the ODIN.

When a single shot blew through one batarian to kill another, and Shepard almost negligently cut down a third batarian with a single blow of her omni-blade, several batarians began to break, fleeing. Marines opened fire, even as the MAKOs came rolling in, crunching batarians beneath wheels now covered in gore and bits of bodies. A battle-suit picked up a fleeing batarian, put its mini-gun to the soldier's chest and fired, scattering chunks of flesh over his companions.

Massani sneered, firing several times, catching two more fleeing batarians in the back of the head to tumble down bonelessly to the earth. "There's nowhere to run, you stupid squint bastards! Die like a guddamned man!"

The batarian force milled about in terror before a slightly larger batarian with a red collar threw down his weapon. "STOP! We … surrender."

Marines and mercenaries alike clutched rifles, and Massani lifted his weapon to blow the batarian's head off, but Shepard held up her hand, triggering the speakers on her armor to full volume.

"No. I didn't give them the chance to surrender beforehand, and I don't kill those who give up. Throw down your weapons and you will be taken into custody." She tilted her head, her Spectre cape fouled with blood. "Or fight and die."

There was a second of hesitation, then the remaining batarians – less than a two hundred – threw down their weapons, raising their hands. Massani spit in disgust. "Thought you were harder than that, Shepard. Should have let the boys have a _barbecue_."

Shepard shook her head. "I need intel, Massani, not corpses. This mess is just one part of something bigger, and you already said they were here looking for something. I need to know what."

She turned to Lee Riley, who was limping. "Get the corpsman to working, and detail off marines to gather up the batarian weapons and get them into isolation. Find a warehouse or something in the colony to store them in." Riley saluted, turning away, and Shepard glanced around, before she walked up to the batarian who had called for surrender.

He was big, taller than she was, and as she got close he took off his helmet. His skin was almost white mixed with very light brown – that indicated he was one of the lowest of the higher-caste batarians. His eyes were dark gray and his armor battered, with the Fist sigil crossed out and replaced with a burning torch.

She eyed him for a long moment before speaking. "Your name."

The batarian grimaced, eyeing her with loathing. "My name is Lathek, Butcher."

She backhanded him hard enough to send him to the ground, blood pouring from his mouth. "Call me that again and I'll show you _why_ I got the name in the first place." She glared down at him, and he slowly got to his feet, fists clenched. "The hell are you doing here? Where is Balak? What is your goal?"

The batarian slowly smiled at her questions. "And what happens to my men if I tell you – do you kill them? Send them back to the Hegemony to face execution? I have no reason to answer your questions, monster."

She folded her arms. "That sounds like you want a bullet in the head. Is that what you want?" She folded her arms, letting her weight fall back onto one hip, and he shook his head. "Then what do you want, Lathek, to make you talk? And keep it fucking reasonable – I don't like you people to begin with."

The batarian's multiple eyes traced over her helmet, and he tilted his head to the right. "What I want is simple. I tell you the answers you want – those answers that I have – and you let my men get on one of our ships and leave for the Traverse. Omega. Wherever. Otherwise, we're dead whether or not you kill us, or give us to the Hegemony."

She snorted. "We shot all your ships out of orbit already."

He nodded. "We landed on modified transports – those should still be intact. They are unarmed, if that is a concern." His expression tightened. "This event is not going according to plan, and if given a way out, I will take it – even from a woman. But not if it only leads to death." He folded his arms, still bleeding from where he'd been struck, and she nodded slowly.

She paused, and glancing around, waved over one of her AIS snipers. "This one says he'll talk if we let his men get back on their ship and get out of here. I need you to verify what he says."

The AIS agent gazed at the batarian curiously. "The Alliance does not typically make deals with pirates and slavers, Baroness."

The batarian spat. "That is the admirals who are slaving. Racek has a higher calling for us. We have only struck military targets – this factory is for warmaking, no?"

The agent shrugged. "Your call, Baroness. Personally, any intel is better than a pile of corpses, but I do not know how that will play with the media...or the Ashlands."

Shepard shrugged. "Given their fancy-ass knights are still sitting at the refinery, I could give a shit what the Ashlands think, and you honestly think I care about the media?"

She turned to the batarian. "You give me what I need to know, you can take one ship and get the fuck out of here. Cross me and I'll burn your eyes out one at a time and break your fucking spine, leaving you a blind, crippled failure."

A shudder of fear crossed his face, and Lathek nodded. "Very well."

**O-ATTWN-O**

It took a good two hours to police up the battle-site, and herd the surrendered batarians – sans weapons and gear – to the the ships they'd arrived on. Shepard sent the AIS aboard each one along with marines to search for intel, or weapons – the ships came up mostly clean, although they did take the navigation data.

Shepard interrogated Lathek in a outlying warehouse building of the facility, along with one of her AIS snipers and Jiong. The story they heard was highly disturbing.

Lathek's rasping voice was faint as he started. "This unit of the Fist was assigned to Admiral Grchek, a high-caste _seromen_ serving the Hegemon himself. We had been deployed to suppress rebellions on an outlying sector world that the SIU couldn't stop. The low-caste there had gone mad, tearing out the eyes of the mid-castes and claiming the end was coming. Some sort of Depressionist-era superstitions, we figured."

She frowned. "What does this have to do with why you're here?"

He sighed. "Everything, monkey. Listen and I will tell you."

One of the marines guarding him growled, but Shepard waved a hand. "Make it quick, squint."

Lathek's four eyes narrowed, but he continued. "The suppression was worse than anything I've seen, we had to kill _everyone_ – not a single one would surrender. When we reached the so-called 'temple' where their leaders were, it was some lunatic who had put out his own eyes." Lathek's voice was filled with wondering horror, and he shuddered before continuing.

"We shot him and he laughed at the wounds, which simply closed before our very eyes. _Nothing_ we did even affected him, and he killed twenty of us with his bare hands."

"That is when Balak came – from where, we do not know, but he arrived just in time to save us. He burned the … thing … with warp fire until it was dead, and then he told Admiral Grchek that he was being deceived."

Shepard glanced at Jiong warily. "This … leader you fought. Describe him. You said the wounds healed. How?"

Lathek frowned. "Blue wires erupted along his body. He had no eyes, but there was a blue light in each ravaged socket, and he could see somehow. He spoke of angles and things coming, of a great horde of darkness that we should kneel before. He was much stronger and faster than even a high-caste batarian should be."

Jiong spat. "This sounds entirely too much like the ranting I heard on Virmire from that tainted asari, and the descriptions Matriarch Aethyta gave of her battle with Benezia."

Shepard exhaled. "What did Balak say to this admiral of yours?"

Lathek shrugged. "I do not know – I was and am merely a captain. I know that he and three other admirals listened to his words, and we turned against the Emperor. I know that Racek has told us the Emperor is corrupted, that he answers to monsters in dark places and that the batarian people are being used."

The batarian looked away. "The other races of the galaxy have always hated us. We do not conform or play by your silly rules that you end up breaking all the time but pretend to uphold." He turned back to face her, eyes defiant. "But there is a line between fighting for a cause I understand and merely obeying orders. Fighting for Racek was … cleaner … than fighting for the Emperor. Despite what you must think of us, we are not animals. I dislike killing rebels. I dislike chastising colonies. I have never slaved." He spat, and met her gaze defiantly. "Those who do are little more than slime. For the average soldier of the Hegemony to turn against the Emperor is no large thing – he is a monster. He oppresses the mid-castes almost as hard as the low-caste."

He folded his arms again. "But whatever Racek and Balak told them, it was enough to convince four high-caste admirals with vast fortunes upon Khar'shan itself to turn their back on their families and lives and fight the Emperor. That is a much different tale. But the information he gave was not shared with us except for bits – things about corruption, about working with monsters. The goals, the purpose, or what that thing we fought was – that I do not know."

She frowned, glancing at the AIS agent. "Walker, see what else you can find out in a quick interview. Then stick them on their ship. Code-lock the ship for Omega and have three frigates see it off to the relay."

Jiong arched an eyebrow. "You are not taking them into custody? The Commissariat might be able to _glean_ more information than this … tidbit."

She shook her head. "I already know what I need to know, Jiong – Balak and Racek have the real answers we need." She turned as Massani entered the warehouse, walking over to him.

"Looks like your people shot the hell out of the squints in orbit, Shepard. Finally a guddamned officer who gets shit done." He was smoking another cigar, and he glanced over at the batarian before looking at her. "You find out why this pack of shit decided to fuck with my paycheck?"

She shook her head. "Nothing conclusive. You mentioned they struck an outlying facility and some of them took off – any idea what's missing or what they could have been looking for?"

The mercenary nodded. "I had my boys check the place out – it was a building the Eldfell accounting types used, some bullshit we weren't supposed to know about. Turns out it was some kind of fancy ass comms uplink, used to coordinate with the asteroid refineries in the belt of this system."

She frowned."What the hell?"

He shrugged, puffing on the cigar. "Hell if I know, sweetheart. The boffin I dragged down there to look the wreckage over said the only thing he could be sure of is that the information was mostly useless – shit like command codes for the engines on an asteroid, maps and layouts, things like that. But neither of the asteroids in this system have been finished – engines aren't even turned on."

She folded her arms, tapping her comm. "Pressly, are we in scanning range of the asteroid belt?"

The XO's voice sounded. "Yes, ma'am."

"Check to see if you find batarian ships, particularly around the two asteroids being worked in this system."

There was a long pause, then Liara spoke. "No, Shepard. Both are reading normally – Traynor was able to reach both on standard comms. The batarians didn't even approach either asteroid."

Shepard clicked off, rubbing her chin. "Why in hell would they attack this place for information like that?"

Massani shrugged. "I have no guddamned idea. All I know is I get paid a bonus for this little barbecue. You fight pretty good for a woman, Shepard – let me know if you ever need something lit on fire, my boys and I will be happy to chip in." He paused. "For the right price."

She shook her head. "I'll keep that in mind, Mr. Massani. Oh, one more thing." She leaned forward, into his personal space, and met his gaze. "If you call me sweetheart one more time, you're going to need a seeing-eye dog."

He stared back, a long moment, before his face split into a grin. "It's a damned shame you're married."

She turned on a heel and walked off towards the door before she slugged him.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Aboard the Kazan fifteen minutes later, Shepard had just gotten out of her armor when Traynor commed her. "Major – incoming high priority call from Alliance command...along with an Adorior authorization tag."

Shepard very nearly fell over. Adorior was the very highest alert status in the Alliance, only sounded once, during the First Contact War and the Battle of Sol itself. A packet flagged with that indicated the subject matter could lead to it being declared.

_More bad news._

"Route it to my stateroom, now, Lieutenant."

She stepped through the hallway into her stateroom, hastily adjusting her uniform top as she sat down in her chair and punched the controls to her terminal. "Shepard here."

The drawn, scarred visage of Admiral Dragunov appeared, rage in his eyes. "Major, we have new tasking for you. While Major Ross has been very successful, I'm afraid Major Solez has … failed. She and her team of Furies were overcome during the boarding attempt, and her men ended up detonating the cruiser and falling back – we were unable to take Racek alive, or gather any useful intelligence."

She scowled but nodded, and he exhaled. "Worse, we just got a priority transmission from Neo Berlin. One of the two Eldfell asteroid mines in the system started moving erratically almost an hour ago. Comms indicated the asteroid was suffering technical issues, nothing serious."

He folded his hands together. "Twenty-seven minutes ago, a series of explosions happened on the asteroid, and it accelerated to full speed, hitting the defense base for Neo Berlin and completely destroying it. Fragments of the asteroid took out the carrier on patrol, and all ships docked were destroyed. A batarian fleet – five cruisers, nine frigates, and almost a dozen raider ships – stormed the system. The only defenders are police patrol ships and a handful of fighters on the ground."

Shepard cursed, pulling up her starmap. Neo Berlin was only a jump away. "How did the goddamned batarians get past the security station at the Trali Relay?" She paused. "One moment sir." She tabbed her comm console. "Pressly, get the fleet out of orbit and headed to the relay, flank."

She didn't wait for a response, turning back to face Dragunov. "Go on, sir."

Dragunov shrugged. "We've been trying to raise the relay security team for the past five minutes - no response. Shepard, Neo Berlin is the primary site we have to mine both eezo and several critical metals used in drive core production, such as antimony and beryllium for the entire Alliance. Losing the planet would destroy our economy. Forty-five percent of our eezo comes from that one world."

Shepard nodded. "You said one asteroid was moving erratically, what about the other?"

Dragunov glanced off screen. "We've had a hasty briefing with Eldfell techs – the first asteroid was fully functional, staffed mostly by bots and controlled remotely using transmissions. They think somehow, the batarians must have hacked the control systems, then snuck into the system – how, we don't know – and detonated explosive charges to seal off the security personnel and prevent them from overriding the engines when they drove it into the station."

Shepard glanced at the map again. "Again...you said there were _two_ asteroids...what is the other one doing?"

The fleet master grimaced. "Nothing – yet. The other one's engines are fully operational, but the comms and control systems are still manual and most of the digging and mining equipment isn't installed yet. The last transmissions from the system before they blew the comms relay indicated the batarians were assaulting the asteroid. Those engines are functional enough to drive the asteroid into the planet, we do know that much."

Shepard could put the pieces together herself. "Crash it into the planet, and we're screwed. I'm scrambling Chiron now – we're done here. Balak stopped here and took out some Eldfell station to get access to what is described to me as security codes and instructions on how to operate the engines. He wasn't planning to do much to this system at all except distract us. Didn't make sense before, but now it does. Clever bastard."

Dragunov winced. "Probably. Get to Neo Berlin, take out the asteroid at all costs before it hits the planet. I've already commed Major Ross, but it will take him almost two hours to get to the system, our astrogators say you're only about half an hour out." He paused. "Take him alive if you can – otherwise, the _planet_ is priority. There are six and a half million people on that world, Major."

Shepard exhaled. "Yes, sir. I won't let them down, sir." She clicked off, and hit the comm.

"Pressly, continue on course for the relay, link us to the Trali Relay. Joker, emergency flank. Traynor signal the fleet, immediate fallback to the relay, formation Broken Spear." She used the code for high level threats to the Alliance, which had to be dealt with at any costs, including kamikaze actions.

Pressly's voice sounded across her comm, tense and tight. "Yes, ma'am. ETA twenty seven minutes to first jump, three more to system emergence."

She nodded, tabbing the 1MC repeater comm. "All hands, set condition 1ST, repel boarders. All hands are to equip survival gear. Section leads, please open the armory lockers. Medical, prepare for trauma incoming. The batarians are attacking a core colony and have already destroyed a space station, we are going in hot and loud."

She got up from her desk, biting her lip, and then tapped her comms console again. "Traynor, additional message – have Jiong put everything we learned from our interrogation in a high priority data packet and send it off to Alliance Command and the AIS."

The situation was getting worse, and Shepard could only hope the planet of Neo Berlin was still there when they arrived.


	29. Chapter 29 : Bring Down the Sky I

**A/N:** _I always wondered why the hell in Bring Down the Sky you just didn't blow the fusion torches up, since you didn't have to change their course, just shut them down. Then again, orbital mechanics does not work the way it does in ME, as I have learned from Kerbal Space Program. While I thought the fights were very well done (especially Charn's fight, damn) I think the backstory needed work.  
_

_Chapter is a bit shorter than the usual 10k word blocks, because I needed a good stopping point. _

_More than one person commented on how easily Shepard tore through the batarians on New Louisiana. That was by design, those were basically State Guard forces, dressed up like the Fist. The upcoming throw downs will be against real Fist of Khar'Shan soldiers. _

_As usual, it's time to pimp out my friend's stories: You should check out **Mass Effect: The Unsung War **by **RED78910**, since it just updated. If you ever wondered why there were no good Aliens/Mass Effect Crossovers, try **jerseydanielgibson**'s **Mass Effect vs Aliens: The Siege Of Hadley's Hope **and its sequel. _

_There is an image of the Kazan available on logicalpremise dot org, done by the sister of my beta, Liethr. It's completely awesome._

* * *

_The prophecy which said the house would fall_  
_And thereby crush me, must bring down the sky,_  
_The only roof above me where I sit,_  
_Or ere it prove its oracle today._  
_Stand fast, ye pillars of the constant Heavens,_  
_As Life doth in me—I who did not die_

_\- Robert Browning, Aeschylus' Soliloquy  
_

* * *

There were days, the Fleet Master thought to himself as he looked at the screens ahead of him, that you couldn't _pay_ things to go right.

"What is our current status, Fleet Master?"

Ivan Dragunov managed to keep from grinding his teeth together as he faced the multitude of faces on the holoscreen, standing at ramrod attention. The President had a worried look on his face, but most of the rest of the Ministers looked more like hungry wolves waiting for a sign of weakness before pouncing.

Given that he was on shaky political ground – the only reason he had not been forced out of his role yet was that Branson was not experienced enough and his position as a prince of House Dragunov – there were few in the crowd of transmitted faces likely to back him up.

Taking a deep breath, he began speaking, his deep voice lancing out. "I just got off the long-range commlink with Major Shepard. She's going after Balak – the goal of his group appears to be an asteroid strike on Neo Berlin. Their attack on New Louisiana was merely to obtain override codes for the engines. One asteroid has already been driven into the defensive base in the system and our last comms suggest the batarians are assaulting the other asteroid."

The Minister of Development, Don Ricardo de la Camara, gave a groan, his elegant features sagging. "And how big is this asteroid, Admiral? How much damage would it do to the eezo refining and mining facilities?"

Dragunov's lips tightened before speaking. "Sirs, the asteroid is a solid nickel-iron asteroid. It is roughly one hundred twenty miles in diameter. My astrophysics people said that if it strike the planet at all, it will be beyond catastrophic. It could conceivably punch through or crack the planetary crust. It will almost certainly destroy all existing mining works and collapse the tunnels, possibly exposing them to lava."

De la Camera paled. "We...can't absorb that, Admiral. It would derail our entire economy, and without that eezo the fleet would be out of gas in weeks! We have no other sources of eezo, and the trace minerals – "

Dragunov held up a hand. "I know, and I have made that point _exceedingly_ clear to Major Shepard. I have authorized her to use any means to stop it. She'll be hitting the system in roughly twenty minutes with her battlegroup, and frankly we're lucky we got a signal out of the system at all. The terrorists, if that's what they are, planned this very carefully."

The president shook his head. "This is a _nightmare_. Can we obtain eezo elsewhere?"

Prime Minster Coleman answered, his blocky head shaking, folding thick arms over his barrel chest. "No, Your Majesty. We buy as much as we can from the asari, but even with our … relationship … the prices are robbery. And our existing mining operations outside of Neo Berlin only produce twenty three percent of our needs. Neo Berlin accounts for over forty percent, predicted to rise to seventy percent in the next three years. If we lose it, we might as well become a vassal state of the Asari, because we would be bankrupt in a year buying the bulk of our eezo commercially."

Windsor winced, turning back to Dragunov. "What of the other two operations you spoke of?"

Dragunov glanced across the screens, measuring the attitudes of the senators and ministers he saw before speaking. "Major Ross has been successful so far, taking out two of the four admirals. He reported that one of the strike forces was indeed composed of batarian elites, but the other one was barely on par with State Forces. He has flagged the third and fourth admiral's fleets and is chasing them now, and Admiral Hackett is setting up intercepts."

Dragunov's voice lowered. "Major Shepard stopped the assault on New Louisiana, preventing the destruction of the refinery. She also reported encountering sub-par forces – namely, ground troops that were dressed in heavy Fist-style armor, but clearly were not actual Fist of Khar'shan forces, and a space element roughly on pirate levels of toughness. She captured and interrogated an officer who was a Fist veteran, but the AIS is still reviewing the information."

Coleman nodded. "And Solez?"

Dragunov sighed. "Major Solez was severely wounded by Racek, sir. Three of her Furies were killed before they brought him down, and Racek could not be taken alive. She is currently in critical condition aboard her cruiser and they are making best speed for a medical facility. They are out of position to assist Major Shepard at this time – transit time is over two hours. Ross was appraised as well, but he is also over two hours out, and for him to break off now would mean the other two admirals get clean away."

Windsor interrupted. "We appreciate the briefing, Fleet Master, but have your people ascertained the driving cause _behind_ this savage attack? We find it doubtful these are merely frustrated soldiers trying to start a war they cannot win."

Dragunov's eyes narrowed and he considered the President's words – and the unspoken message behind the shift away from briefing the results – for several seconds before speaking slowly and cautiously. "That very much depends on if you prefer the AIS interpretation of events or that of the Commissariat xenopsychologists. The AIS feels this is an entirely political event – that the Hegemon, aided by high-caste types, finally has enough strength and feels the batarians are weary enough of the embargo to challenge the Emperor openly. If the Imperial Guard is shamed and crushed, and the Fist – or what is seen as the Fist – covers itself in glory and strikes blows against the Alliance, enough large scale revolts could topple the Emperor from power."

Coleman sniffed. "_Barbaric_. Tens of millions of their own people would die in such chaos."

Minister Bekenstein, on the other hand, gave a weary chuckle, his sallow features twisting into a smile that did not reach his dark eyes. "And the Hegemon could care less – most of the people dying would be low-caste or mid-caste types, after all. Realistically, all he has to do to take power is cripple the Emperor and make some kind of concessions on slavery and we all know the Council would let the squints right back into the Citadel."

Prince Aloxius, the Minister of Intelligence, inclined his head, his voice smooth and quiet. "I surmise, based on the fact that you presented us with a choice of parties to consider, that the Commissariat takes a different view?"

Dragunov nodded tersely. "Yes, sir. They point out this entire operation flies in the face of long-standing batarian beliefs – and that the Hegemon is scrambling his own forces to support, not supplant, the Emperor. That four admirals of the high-caste could not possibly be confident enough in winning to back Racek and Balak in something this risky without a guarantee of payouts – and there is none. The two Ross took down fought to the death rather than surrender – if this was a ploy to make the Fist look good and for the admirals to profit from such, then fighting to the death makes no sense – they can't take advantage of the situation if dead."

Dragunov's face hardened. "The initial sampling of data that Ross recovered from the computers aboard the second admiral's ship, and the information Shepard got out of her captive, are also suggestive of something else going on, but we are unsure of what. We're trying to figure out the importance of certain figures that Balak and Racek spoke of, and what exactly they mean by 'corruption of the Emperor', but we have had little progress so far – events are moving too fast."

Windsor lifted a hand. "Very well. What do you plan?"

Dragunov's voice rose. "There is little we can do at this juncture except wait, Your Majesty. The asteroid in Neo Berlin will take at least two hours to reach a speed and trajectory that ensures that even if the engines are destroyed it will impact the planet. I cannot imagine much of _anything_ that can handle two hours of being under assault by Shepard. Ross has the other two admirals on the run and Hackett can crush them at his leisure."

Windsor nodded. "Then let us consider the political response to this … travesty. The Citadel Council has formally informed us that they cannot get involved in this due to 'strategic limitations', although Councilor Sparatus was extremely eager to let the turian fleet 'chastise' the Emperor. If what you are surmising is correct, Admiral Dragunov, we do not yet know if the appropriate target of our wrath is the Emperor, the Hegemon, or possibly someone else."

He exhaled. "With that in mind, we are still extremely displeased that even after the sacrifices we have made that the Citadel is less than attentive to our needs. Minister Bekenstein, your words to us regarding a political statement to the Citadel Council are taken at face value. While I can certainly understand their reticence in getting involved in this situation, convey our vast displeasure. If the asari have resources enough to send assassins into our space and try to kill our Councilor and two of our citizens, they at least should be able to procure enough resources to assist in at least cleaning up this mess once our own people have stopped the perpetrators."

Bekenstein gave a flat, ugly smile. "I will be happy to convey such a message, Your Majesty. The lack of a relief package being offered as they did after Eden Prime is indeed disagreeable, almost insulting. I will make sure such is portrayed in the media in the light we see it in."

Windsor turned back to face Dragunov. "As for you, Fleet Master – I am well aware that Major Solez's strike force is too far out from Neo Berlin to be of direct assistance, but once they have offloaded their casualties, instruct the commodore in charge of the naval assets to head there anyway. Shepard may require backup and you have already pointed out we have no assets in the area capable of providing such."

Dragunov nodded. "I had already made plans along those lines, Your Majesty, but I will continue that effort."

Windsor nodded. "In that case...Minister Barnes, you have your authorization to mobilize the _Solguard_ if that is required. Let us pray it is not. I also want every other asteroid with an engine locked down within the next two hours and someone to explain to me how exactly this debacle transpired."

The Minister of Defense nodded, bowing his head. "Thank you, Your Majesty. We will only deploy a small fraction of it, but the lack of defenses at Arcturus and Charon make me nervous given the other stunts the batarians have pulled so far. I will leave securing the asteroids in the solar system to Admiral Dragunov, I will have other admirals secure asteroid mines at Terra Nova, Bekenstein and Mindoir."

The Fleet Master suppressed a sigh. "If there is nothing else, milords, I will be monitoring the situation from Alliance Command, and I will communicate any further developments as they transpire."

Windsor nodded, and Dragunov clicked off, cursing a moment later before walking from his private comm room back into his office.

He saw both of his aides standing there, and sighed. "Scramble whatever marines and support personnel we can get onto a few transports and get them headed out to the Belt – I want every single asteroid mine in the solar system with engines locked down tighter than Helga Manswell's virginity. And get me the Corporate Court on the line, we'll need some planning for the fleet eezo situation if Shepard messes up and Neo Berlin is turned into rubble."

He glanced at the haptic display on the wall, and curled his hands into fists. All he could do was wait, and he was never a patient man.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The atmosphere in the CIC of the Kazan was tense enough that Shepard almost wished for Joker's usual wisecracking antics to come over the comm link rather than terse reports on time to the mass relay.

They were running full-out for the relay, weapons loaded, tube doors opened, and in full battle readiness. None of her ships had taken any serious damage in the pitiful fight the batarian ships in New Louisiana had put up, and the ground casualties were minor – two dead, roughly twenty seriously wounded. One of her battle suits was out of commission, and the second MAKO had taken some rocket hits, but her combat engineers reported they'd have the MAKO fixed up in ten minutes.

She frowned, tapping the status repeater at her command station, but there were no updates on the condition of the MAKO. She grimaced and clicked off, turning her thoughts to the fight – and how easy it had been.

Three thousand Fist soldiers would have taken everything she could throw at them and laughed before tearing her ground troops apart. So they obviously, they weren't Fist soldiers – but that left the question of where the real Fist of Khar'shan soldiers in this little mess were, and she guessed it would be Neo Berlin, preparing to assault or already assaulting the asteroid.

She could only assume that Balak had left his less valuable soldiers behind to distract the Alliance while he moved on Neo Berlin, but the reasoning behind doing so at all eluded her. Balak's strike force couldn't be very large, and leaving behind most of his cannon fodder only meant whatever he planned would have to go fast and hard to be successful.

But slamming an asteroid into a planet would surely leave them vulnerable to simple kinetic bombardment. She was still struggling with the reasoning behind it when Joker's voice broke her train of thought. "ETA to relay is one minute, Major."

She nodded to herself, shifting from foot to foot. "Understood, Joker." She was still in her battle armor, having seen Doctor Sedanya already about the wound in her leg, but the chair was not designed for the bulk of the armor, making sitting in her command chair impossible. The wound, although patched and stitched up, still hurt, and standing wasn't helping, but she was far too nervous to lay down and wait.

A minute later, the Kazan erupted through the relay, followed by the rest of the battlegroup, the frigate's engines blazing as they moved out in front to meet any threat. Even as they were discharging jump shock, Pressly scowled as alarms rang in Ops Alley.

"Fire control radars, Major – long range. Batarian bands. Looks like there's already been some kind of firefight."

She stood, staring at the plot, being updated as the sensors sweeps returned their findings. Colms spoke calmly as he began feeding the data to science and ops. "Two contacts bearing zero six five mark two tac zero, initial classification frigates. Not batarians."

The ops tech was moving already. "ATF tracker alpha and beta assigned. Powering up long range sensors bands, launching drones."

Colms narrowed his eyes as the Kazan shuddered, fighters disgorging themselves from the open hangar bay. "The defensive station is gone, Major. There is a mass of wreckage entangled with a stony asteroid roughly fifty-one miles in diameter, and several large chunks of asteroid tumbling away from the site. They're going to hit the fourth uninhabited planet in six hours."

She nodded. "Signals or comms coming from the frigates?"

He shook his head. "None yet, commander." He frowned. "I'm getting some sort of reading dead ahead, near the second asteroid. Lieutenant Commander T'Soni, can you resolve the readings from bearing three five one mark seven tac ten, please?"

Liara's hands were moving rapidly, along with two of her assistants. "I am attempting to do so." She bit her lip. "There is a great deal of … some sort of heated metallic chaff in between us and the second asteroid – it may be magnetized." She paused. "Weapons discharges, mostly ionic burst trails and signs of mass accelerator fire."

Colms waited, as the sensors continued to work, then spat a curse. "Contacts – eight of them. I see it now, they used some kind of ECM spike to cover their tracks a bit. Clever, but primitive. One large contact, rough classification heavy cruiser. Three moderate contacts – possible destroyers or light cruisers. Four frigate class vessels."

Shepard grimaced. "So, they're pretty much a match for us. ID on those two frigates, Pressly."

Pressly nodded. "IFF coming in now, ma'am. System has them flagged as Alliance, ma'am. They're dead in the water."

Shepard turned to Traynor. "Orders to the fleet – ahead flank, course three five five mark two tac thirty. Bring us up above the ecliptic. Fire at will on any hostile. And send out a message to the Alliance frigates, I need to know what the shit happened here."

The battlegroup raced ahead, and the enemy force moved with smooth precision, coming around in a neat line of battle with no gaps. Colms arched an eyebrow. "Confirmed batarian ships, ma'am – picking up ion discharges from their torpedoes. These ships also appear to be better flown than that trash in the last system."

Shepard muttered. "Yeah, probably actual Fist warships. This is going to be fucking ugly. Pressly, dispatch additional damage control teams to all spaces. Traynor, any responses from those frigates yet?"

The young lieutenant blew out a shaky breath. "Both Alliance frigates are out of commission, wrecked engines and severe damage. The rest of the fleet was destroyed by the asteroid strike or the batarians. They say the batarians assaulted the second asteroid about fifteen minutes ago, but there's a security force on it fighting them, or there should have been. They haven't gotten any radio from the asteroid in the past twelve minutes."

Shepard nodded. "We'll have to cut through their ships to land our own troops. Signal the battlegroup to engage. Colms, load another Kyle-class torpedo."

He nodded. "A word of warning, Major – if we fail to stop the asteroid conventionally, we will require several torpedoes to destroy it – given the size of that asteroid, one will not suffice. I haven't had a chance to examine its composition, it may require more than two. Given that we only have three left..."

She pinched the bridge of her nose, then nodded. "Understood. Comply with the order. Liara, what are the enemy ships doing?"

"Picking up speed, Sara. They appear to be moving into an arrow formation." The asari frowned at the sensor readouts, which resulted on accelerating quantum pairs of various particles and seeing how they were affected at faster than light speeds. "I cannot tell if they are damaged or not, but all are moving faster than the Kazan can."

Shepard nodded, rolling her shoulders, hitting the commlink for the 1MC announcement system. "All hands prepare for high-speed maneuvers." She clicked off. "Joker, bring us in, fast and hard. Traynor, comms to the fleet – frigates flanking line, destroyers on me. Advise our fighter wing to harry that cruiser with missiles, I want their GARDIAN systems tied up."

The next five minutes were an ugly introduction to the difference between batarian pirates and true batarian military forces. Shepard's battlegroup launched its missiles first, followed by a spread of torpedoes, answered by a counter fire from the batarians ships that had far fewer missiles, but over thirty torpedoes.

Pressly and his ops team worked ECM furiously as Shepard barked orders, bringing the fleet back down from the higher position they'd taken. She bit her lip as the heavy whine of GARDIAN systems firing rang through the hull as the two fleets took their initial shots, frigates working hard to stop the initial spread of torpedoes.

The batarian commander was cunning, he'd shot his torpedoes on a lower arc, meaning that to stop them, her fleet would have to expose itself to the incoming missiles instead of maneuvering out of the way.

Missiles detonated around them, the Kazan twisting to avoid a torpedo, and the main guns firing as ranges closed. A spray of missiles tore through the GARDIAN defenses of the batarian frigate line, shredding one of the frigates, blasting away part of the prow of the ship as well as it's engines. One of the batarian destroyers caught a torpedo amidships and came apart in a blast of white light and tumbling shrapnel, and their battle cruiser took a glancing blow from another torpedo, trailing wreckage and slowing significantly.

But the losses were not all one-sided. Three of her frigates were hammered with missiles, and her makeshift stealth frigate, slowed by the conversion of its reaction engines into heat sinks, took a torpedo to the bow, blasting the ship down the middle. She closed her eyes as the explosion ripped the small frigate completely in half.

Von Khar's own ship took missiles stern and to port, spinning out of control and burning. The Kazan closed with her counterpart, still firing her main guns, even as the ship reeled from being hit with mass accelerator fire. The two cruisers went to knife fight range, smaller broadside mass accelerators firing rapidly and GARDIAN laser arrays tracing hulls.

Even as she smiled viciously when a blast of one of her guns smashed through the enemy cruiser, blowing off one of its winglike weapons pods, she staggered as the Kazan heeled. Explosions sounded somewhere below, and she glanced at her status panel. Alarms were flashing for the engines, and she could feel the ship slowing. "Engineering, damage report."

Tali's voice had a warble in it, and the sounds of emergency fire suppression systems could be heard in the background. "Missiles hit the engine quad – number three is not responding. Six of my people are dead. Core is at 72% stability and falling, bringing backups on line."

Pressly grimly glanced up. "Took a heavy shot amidships, ma'am. Armor is holding, but we have hull breaches on deck three."

She glanced at Colms. "What's the burst range on a Kyle? That is, how close can we be to the bastard and not be burnt up by it going off when it blows?

He narrowed his eyes. "Six hundred eighty to nine hundred feet. Roughly."

She nodded. "Traynor, orders – pull us away from von Khar's ship, and maintain an opening of fifteen thousand meters to all enemy ships. Focus fire on the the destroyers. Colms, as soon their cruiser opens out range again to try to line us up for mass accelerator fire, hit him with a Kyle when none of our ships are in range."

He gave her a flat look. "At that close range, ma'am, radiation exposure and shock waves will inflict severe damage on us as well."

She nodded, grimacing as one of her destroyers took another missile salvo. "Do it. We're down three frigates and two destroyers. He's _winning_."

She griped the rail as Joker arched the Kazan upwards, her forced slowly pulling back. A second spray of missiles from the one destroyer still in the fight smashed a counterpart batarian destroyer to pieces, blowing its bridge apart, and the ship began to tumble.

Shepard watched, then held up a hand. "Colms, belay my last – fire conventional torpedoes at the cruiser!" She almost laughed in glee as the out of control batarian destroyer, engines still flaring at full power but unable to control itself, spun in a lazy circle before smashing into the heavy cruiser.

The batarian cruiser's aft crumpled with the blow before the destroyer detonated violently, shattering the engines of the cruiser and stripping off long sections of armor, plumes of fire and blue energy from a destroyed core spurting out in long jets.

The Kazan shuddered as three torpedoes lanced out , bearing dead at the cruiser. It fired its GARDIAN arrays desperately, scoring the armor on one torpedo and taking out another, but the third slammed into the narrow section of the cruiser's amidships and erupted into a blast of white light, followed by the heavy explosion of a core failure. The entire front of the batarian cruiser literally shattered, flying apart in burning chunks and pieces of tumbling hull sections.

The three remaining batarian frigates and the only remaining destroyer rounded to face them, but Shepard merely snarled as the Kazan's main guns barked. Heavy slugs, five times the size of the Normandy's firepower, hit the destroyer squarely, punching through its hull and blowing apart the center of the ship. Her frigates opened up with missiles and the enemy frigates turned to flee, engines flaring with power as they arced away.

One got caught by missiles, the spray overloading their battered shields and detonating in the engines of the frigate, sending it into a wild tumble which ended a moment later as the weakened hull couldn't restrain the thrust of the two working engines. Slowly the frigate tore itself in two, spilling its crew into the void as the two segments spun madly out of control.

The other two frigates accelerated away, towards the relay, and Shepard shook her head as she exhaled. "Traynor, have the fighters harry them. Pressly, status report."

The XO had a grave look on his face. "Not good, ma'am. Valley Forge, the stealth frigate, is destroyed. We're not seeing any escape pods – they didn't even have time to abandon ship. Two frigates report loss of control and weapons. The last two are functional, but the Hastings reports heavy casualties and loss of the medbay."

He paged through comms reports. "All three destroyers are answering hails, but none of them is combat worthy, ma'am. All of them report heavy casualties and damage, and the command destroyer is still out of control – Von Khar is injured and unconscious, his XO is attempting to restore maneuvering thrusters now."

She nodded, tapping her comms repeater. "Tali? How we doing?"

The quarian sounded upset and worried. "Not good, Shepard. I have plasma leaks on three sections and engine two is leaking fuel. I'm getting reports from all over the ship of air loss and damage."

She nodded, tapping another link. "Doctor Sedanya, casualties?"

The asari's voice sounded tired. "Eleven dead so far, Major. Medbay is filling up, plasma burns, shrapnel wounds, and the like. My roving teams are setting up a forward medical area in engineering to assist there, but there's probably another thirty or so dead or injured." Her voice hardened. "I presume we cannot break off this engagement?"

Shepard sighed. "Not yet."

"Then expect at least three more to die – while this is a very well equipped medbay, I still don't have all the facilities I'd need to deal with fourth-degree plasma burns. I need to go, Medical out."

Shepard grimaced and tapped her comm. "Set condition 3ST, battle readiness. Damage control teams, begin operations." She clicked off and turned to face Traynor. "Orders to the fleet – I need status of their ground troops in fifteen minutes."

Shepard tapped another control. "Lieutenant Cole, get a pilot to take the pinnace out and load up the troops from the destroyers and frigates and get them on the Kazan, we're going to have to do a hot drop onto that asteroid. You have twenty minutes."

Cole's hard voice answered in firm tones. "Yes ma'am, I'll get it done."

She rubbed her eyes, and Traynor spoke up. "Ma'am, the fighter commander reports his ships were able to destroy an additional frigate – the other one is accelerating at rates they can't keep up with. He's requesting orders."

She nodded. "Have him set CAP over the rest of the battlegroup. Also, give orders – the rest of the battlegroup is to hold position and cover each other while the Kazan advances to the asteroid. Send an update to Command and request medical and repair assistance."

She walked away from the command plinth, around the plot and up through Ops Alley, until she stood in the cockpit. The other two pilots there looked shaken, as did the two gunnery control officers, but Joker sat almost placidly, tugging on his cap as she came up behind him.

"Major?"

She snorted. "Good save on dodging that torpedo, Joker. I didn't think you could power-skid a cruiser."

Ensign An Li blinked at Shepard. "He's _insane_, ma'am."

Joker merely laughed, tapping controls on his panel. "No problems. As always, I got this. Nice to be able to fly something that can, you know, not die when it takes a single missile. Still...half my engines are flaky or not working, holding course right now is a mess."

She nodded. "Take us into the asteroid, but not too fast. I don't know if they build these things with GTS defenses or not, but if they do the first thing the batarians will try is to take those over. We're not in good enough shape to take many more hits."

The pilot nodded. "Got it. Secondaries, control is to you two while I handle flight surfaces and engines."

The other two pilots nodded as Shepard headed off.

**O-ATTWN-O**

As they approached the asteroid, and the Kazan sorted out its damage, Shepard waited for someone on the asteroid to respond to hails. Liara's sensor scans had indicated signs of fighting on the surface – burning buildings and explosions. Only two landing ships could be seen, which meant Balak didn't have many troops with him.

Cole had gathered as many marines as he could from the other ships in the battlegroup and they were now aboard the Kazan. Given that they were going to have to use drop pods for this landing since their frigates were all shot up, she figured it was going to be messy. If she could get comms with someone on the asteroid, they could at least coordinate their actions.

When Traynor did get an incoming comms request from the asteroid, however, it wasn't the humans calling. Shepard had it routed to her stateroom, and grimaced as the small haptic display lit up with the image of a batarian.

Wearing night-black armor and with an SIU shotgun hanging in a sling harness festooned with grenades, he looked the part of a heavy assault type. The ugly patch covering one eye, and the elaborate purple tattoo on his face, however, let Shepard know this was Balak.

His voice was surprisingly soft for a batarian, and almost amused. "I am honored they would send such as you after me, Spectre."

She narrowed her eyes, folding her arms. "You are Balak, I presume?"

He gave a batarian bow, ending by tilting his head to the left. "I am. Turn your ships around and leave this system."

She gave him an incredulous look. "No. Surrender your forces, it's over. I've blown your fleet out of the sky, Racek is dead, and your admirals are surrounded. You have two unarmed lander ships and no way off that rock, and I've a torpedo that will blow it to smithereens. Give up and I swear we won't turn you over to the Hegemony."

He gave a soft laugh, so out of odds with his appearance. "You do not understand the stakes here, warrior. This is not about politics, or hatred. It is about survival and exposing the monstrosity atop the Throne of Black. The Emperor is no longer himself. He is … _corrupted_. If I must die that he may be lanced, then so be it. Death holds no fear for me any longer."

She folded her arms. "So stand down and explain it to us. You don't need to kill millions of people and if you drive this asteroid into the planet – the SA won't be able to stop the Emperor because you'll have ruined our economy."

He gave a negating motion with his hand, dipping his head. "I'm afraid I cannot do that, Spectre Shepard. I fear the same rot at the core of Khar'shan may have infected Earth as well. I have seen a little too much darkness to believe anything but the full might of a united galaxy can burn out the filth of the Emperor."

He exhaled, nose planes fluttering. "If it is any comfort, I expect to die, and most of my people to die, in return for what I do today." His voice hardened. "Your weapons will never touch us, the GTS defenses on this rock are formidable, more than enough to stop torpedoes. The engines are already moving us towards the planet, but if you try to stop us I will execute the three hundred hostages on board."

She gave him a cold smile of her own. "Balak, you clearly know my past. Do you honestly think I would hesitate at letting three hundred people die to save millions, especially when given a direct order to do so?"

Surprisingly, he shook his head. "Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. I am no fool, but I do not think your grim nickname is a measure of your true personality. A true Butcher would have sacrificed the Council, not saved it. You are clearly sick of having the blood of innocents on your hands, just as I am."

He gave her a fang-filled smile. "Take your best shot, if you must – when it fails, you can blame their deaths on me to make yourself feel better."

The comm link died, and Shepard walked back to the CIC.

"I need options. Colms, can we take the asteroid out with Kyle torpedoes?"

The weapons officer was standing next to Liara, talking with her and two of her people, and looked up when she asked her question frowning. "I am not sure, Major. I can tell we do not have sufficient ordinance to vaporize it – we would need roughly seven torpedoes for that. This is a monstrous asteroid, almost a fifth of the sizes of Ceres. Taking out rocks a thousand feet in diameter is one thing – this is almost a hundred and twenty miles!"

He paused. "If we fired all our torpedoes, the computer models say we might crack it in half, or perhaps thirds. But we have no way to guarantee all pieces would miss the planet, and if any of the pieces still has functional engines, we're back at square one."

She nodded. "So we take out the engines. Why not just use the mass accelerators or torpedoes to blast them?"

Liara walked over to the plot, touching several controls and bringing up a 3-D model of the asteroid. "There are no defenses on the far side of the asteroid, but the engines and living areas are heavily defended." She pointed to glowing areas of the map. "There are twenty six GARDIAN towers and six heavy missile emplacements, as well as five or six heavy mass accelerator turrets. There are also five kinetic barrier generators, three over the engines alone, two more wide area barriers over the living areas."

Colms' expression soured. "That would take far too long to batter down with our guns and they can shoot down all our torpedoes. And they can shoot back, wonderful. This is getting worse and worse. What kind of inarticulate tool decided to turn a mining asteroid into a _battle platform_?"

Shepard folded her arms. "No shit. How in _fuck_ did they even get past all that firepower to land?"

Traynor spoke up. "Ma'am, I've been talking with the ground stations on Neo Berlin, to the Eldfell offices there – according to them, Balak had humans helping him. A crew arrived in an Eldfell ship, and claimed they were maintenance from Sol. They had the right clearance codes and everything. They landed on the big asteroid and used its arrays to transmit signals to the smaller ones, before deactivating the entire GTS system on the big asteroid. That's when Balak's ships came out of the relay and the smaller asteroid rammed the defense station."

Shepard looked at Traynor, gritting her teeth. "_Humans_ are working with this lunatic? What in fuck?"

Jiong, leaning against the CIC wall, clucked. "I cannot stand traitors. We'll need to capture those particular humans alive, Major, if possible. The Commissariat will want to send a strong message."

She huffed. "Later. Alright, Colms, if we can't blow it up straight away, and we can't take it out with the guns, can we blow up the engines with the torpedoes we have?"

He shook his head. "Not the conventional ones. Too slow to get past all that defense, and the engines are massive – we'd need five or six shots for each. I just can't see our shots getting through that defense." He paused. "A single Kyle torpedo would suffice to take out the engines. But again, with that much GTS defense I cannot see any torpedo getting through."

She scowled. "What about the FTL launcher? Isn't that it's point?"

He shook his head. "We can't get close enough to use the FTL launcher without emerging well into their mass accelerator engagement envelope. We'll take heavy hits, and there's no guarantee we'd get the shot off before those cannons put a hole in us. Even if we did, we would be within the radiation range of the blast. The only way we could pull it off is a micro-FTL jump of our own to close range, then unleashing it at point blank range and running, hoping to not be shot down by the GTS systems before impact and not take a lethal radiation dose afterwards."

She hung her head. "So in other words, suicide."

Liara spoke. "Sara, we cannot do that in any case. The engines have already moved the asteroid. It isn't on a direct collision course yet, but it will be in seventy two minutes. Already, however, the course it is on will, if not changed, loop around the sun and impact the planet once the loop is complete. We will have to get down there and change the course using the engines."

She sighed. "He's sure to slag those the minute he can to lock in the course. Alright, that means we have to land, take out his fucking men, retake the engines and change the course in about an hour. Ideas?"

Liara pointed to the map. "The GTS array protects the majority of the surface, but this crater here dips below their line of sight and is just outside GARDIAN laser range. Assuming we land here we can avoid being directly fired upon. But once we start approaching, they will be able to localize us with the GARDIAN arrays and fire on us."

Shepard nodded, then bit her lip. "Unless we're distracting them. Colms, how many stock torpedoes and missile do we have?"

He arched an eyebrow, but walked back to his station, tapping a control. "Thirty four torpedoes, six hundred eleven missiles. We also have eighty four missiles used to reload the fighters."

Shepard nodded. "Alright. Do we have maps or anything of the layout of this shithole?"

Traynor nodded, smiling. "I went ahead and procured those for you, ma'am, from the Eldfell techs on the surface."

Shepard paused to give her a warm smile. "Good job, Lieutenant." She waited until the map flicked on, eyeing the layout.

The engines were as big as Colms described, each one five hundred feet in circumference, arranged in a pentagon around the living areas. A single building at the center served as the GTS control tower and central command, while dormitories, barracks and other buildings radiated outwards. The mining rigs were off to one side of the entire areas, along with heavy construction equipment.

Her mind put together several pieces, coming up with an idea, and she squared her shoulders. "The plan is simple." She highlighted the buildings closest to the defense tower. "Once we can get inside the perimeter, the defenses are not a problem. DACT are too small to trigger targeting radars, as are drop pods. Not sure about a MAKO, but the pinnace is way too big."

Colms examined the layout. "I don't think a MAKO could slip past, but it depends on who is manning the GTS defenses. Someone experienced could get a radar return and saturate the area. Drop pods will get past only as long as no one is focusing on the area – they could reload their mass accelerators with flak and hurl out area suppression clouds if they knew."

Shepard shuddered at the thought of coming through flak going 2% of light-speed and continued. "That's why we're going to distract them. Pressly, I need the rest of the battlegroup to stand off at ranges well outside their envelope and hurl missiles at them, along with the Kazan. Throw in a torpedo when you can, I want those defenses saturated. I also want as much ECM as possible filling the space."

She turned to Traynor. "I want you trying to hack their comms and see if you can't remotely access the GTS array like they did. Unless Balak is a damned fool he's severed any hard-lines between his comms relays and other systems, but it gives them one more thing to deal with."

She turned to Colms. "I want our fighters doing long range missile runs – out of GARDIAN range, but harassment. Target any batarian units you see and those two ships of theirs, then go after the defenses."

Colms nodded. "Tricky, but doable. I will let the flight commander know."

She exhaled. "DACT will lead, followed by Beta Squad and some extras in drop pods. We can't go in with the full force – no way to get them all down, and the quicker we're on the surface the less time Balak has to figure out we're dropping on him and start searching. We go down with our heaviest hitters, break into the GTS center, and take down the defenses."

She pointed to the control tower. "From there we should also be able to shut off the engines. Once the defenses are down, I need every available marine, battle-suit and the MAKOs to drop to back us up, because we're going to be badly outnumbered."

Pressly folded his arms. "This is a risky plan, ma'am."

Traynor gave an uncertain frown. "Uh, ma'am? Who will doing the hacking?" She paused. "I... I could go."

Shepard exhaled. "Tali will probably have to do that." She paused. "But send a message to Dallas to get up-armored, he'll back her up. You, Lieutenant, are staying up here. You're not combat cleared. Dallas was in the _Solguard_."

She smiled. "I appreciate the offer though."

She glanced over at Liara, who gave her a slow nod. "Traynor, have Tali, Dallas, Beta Squad, the DACT, Senior Chief Vega, and Lieutenant Cole meet in my stateroom in five. Pressly, bring us in closer and prepare the drop, and get the fleet into position."

**O-ATTWN-O**

She stood in her stateroom as the last of Beta filed in through the doors. Lee Riley's armor looked a little banged up, but she was otherwise fine. Her two AIS snipers were unhurt, and two of her three N5's were equally ready to go – the third was still in the medbay.

Senior Chief Vega stood next to Montoya and Florez, while Cole towered over them from behind. Tali sat in one of Shepard's chairs, Liara in the other. Dallas stood in a corner, looking increasingly alarmed and awkward in battle armor. Jiong and Susan both stood quietly by the door.

Shepard let her eyes flicker over them all before speaking. "I've had to say this far too many times, but this is likely going to be a trip someone's not coming back from. Short version – we have about an hour to stop a batarian terrorist from driving a huge asteroid directly into the colony below with millions of people on it, that is also our major eezo mine."

She exhaled. "The rock is defended, heavily. There's as many as two companies of batarians down there – if that's a hundred-plus Fist soldiers, we are in a world of fucking hurt. If it's more shitty pirate scum, we'll be fine. We don't know and have no way of knowing until we hit dirt."

She glanced at the two DACT. "Our DACT will lead, we're going to touch down as close to the GTS control tower as we can. From what we can tell, the engines are controlled from an adjacent building, comms from a third. When we come down, DACT will breach the tower, and we'll go down in drop pods right after them. Beta will back up the DACT and take out the GTS defenses, then hold position and dig in."

She faced Jiong. "I need you and Susan to lead the strike force – you'll be facing heavy opposition and I can't spare my other biotic."

The Commissars nodded, and Jiong spoke. "Might I suggest sending down at least one medical corpsman as well, Major?"

She nodded. "Good idea – talk to Doctor Sedanya about who to send." She turned to Cole. "Cole, you, Vega, and Dallas will be with Liara, Tali, and I. We're going to find the engines and hack the controls, redirect the asteroid to a safe orbit or trajectory, then slag the controls so it can't be altered. Dallas, you're coming along because we need a good damned hacker and you're almost as good as Tali, and I have no idea how hard this system will be to crack."

The Supply officer gave a nervous scowl. "Major, I haven't fought since my _Solguard_ days."

She nodded. "I know, and Cole and Vega are there mostly to cover you, while Liara and I cover Tali. I told you that you'd have to step up sooner or later – if something happens to Tali when we hit or on the move, I need a backup option."

The man gave a shaky nod, and she looked around again. "This is likely to be a goddamned mess. If I could do this any other fucking way besides going in stupid, I would. But we don't have any other options – so let's get down there and fuck them up and get out alive."

Lee Riley nodded. "Shepard, are you _sure_ you want it done this way?" She paused to glance at Liara. "We can do this without you risking your own damned neck."

Shepard gave a sad smile. "Lee, you can't take a Glorious batarian. Has anyone ever seen one fight?"

Florez nodded. "We dropped on one back when I was with the Sixth. Bastard killed nineteen DACT by himself before we could drop him."

Shepard nodded. "I'm the only one who's gone head to head with one and made it out alive. Liara is stronger than almost any biotic I know. We'll have to handle him and keep him off Tali and Dallas until we can pull this off."

Riley frowned. "And if the fucker comes after us, ma'am?"

Shepard narrowed her eyes. "Have the snipers focus fire on him, use disruptor rounds. Phase inhibitors and pulse suppressors will not work."

Susan smiled. "We've done some training on how to fight Glorious batarians, Captain Riley. If it comes down to it, you are to fall back while Commissar Jiong and I engage the bastard." She patted her neural mace.

Shepard gave her a hard look that Susan only answered with more concentrated cheer, and sighed. "Alright, then. You have five minutes to pray, smoke, and get to the launch bay, and I hope you all remembered how to do a hot drop in a pod."

Florez snickered. "None of that shit for us, ma'am. We're ready to fly the friendly skies." He and Montoya grinned, and Dallas gave them a disbelieving look before shuddering.

"You people are all _insane_."

It was Tali who nodded as she stood, her voice amused. "Yes, well – as the engineers are always telling me, one doesn't have to be crazy to work here but it does help."


	30. Chapter 30 : Bring Down the Sky II

**A/N:** _I want to thank **Liethr** for reviewing the chapter for consistency and flow. He is awesome. His sister is an awesome artist. Once again, t__here is an image of the Kazan available on logicalpremise dot org, drawn by her and colored by him. I'd marry talent like hers if I could, but is not, sadly, a dating site :D  
_

_One thing that should be kept in mind in understanding parts of this chapter is simple: Reaper technology is not something the Reapers invented - none of it. All of it is sourced from their makers. That little fact will make a few things easier to grasp.  
_

_I am working currently on updating the Cerberus Files entry on Batarians, but it is slow going. _

_If you are wanting to see a particularly twisted view of the ME universe with bits of my own background flung in, 5 Coloured Walker's **Busy Stars** had a recent update.  
_

* * *

_'Any who can face death without fear or regret is already dead.'_

_\- batarian proverb  
_

* * *

Balak's biotic senses registered the doors to his room opening, and his three working eyes flickered in that direction as Charn entered the room. He smiled at the frown on the bigger batarian's face – Charn never did understand how no one could sneak up on him, no matter how quiet they were.

He sat in the middle of the room on a plain black offering mat of soft felt, his private Pillar-altar a small carved block in front of him. The room was plain steel – a supply room, Balak supposed – with three walls lined by heavy shelving, empty of anything but dust, and a metallic grille floor. He liked it because it was quiet, the thrum of the asteroid engines burning along not reaching the room with their shaking vibrations. Staying in the command center would have made more sense, but it was still fouled with blood and bodies no one had time to clean up.

Why bother if they'd be dead in an hour or so anyway?

There was, for no reason he could discern, a wide armaglass window built into the south wall of the room, and gazing out upon the endless starry night and the blasted stark white surface of the asteroid was interesting. Only humans would built windows into a supply room.

Monkey logic never made much sense to him.

Charn folded his arms, eyes fixing on Balak. The big Fist captain was taller than Balak, his dark golden skin a sign of his higher mid-caste status, his dark eyes narrow. Of all the Fist soldiers that had followed Racek, only Charn had shown Balak any interest – or respect. He found the soldier's simple faith in Racek quite amusing, and didn't understand why Charn seemed to see Balak as Racek's second in command.

Still, it made things easier. Where Charn lead, the Fist would follow. Given his own low-caste background, things could have been worse. He politely turned his body to face him squarely, even if he didn't stand up, and tilted his head to the left in quiet respect.

Charn's rough, granite-like voice shattered the quiet. "The monkeys have started flinging missiles at us. Defenses are holding, but sooner or later something is going to slip through. Fighters are launching a few shots as well – one of the landing ships is holed, now. Not that we were going to get off this rock alive, anyway."

Balak nodded calmly. "No one named a Spectre can be considered a fool, Charn. There is a purpose to this bombardment – eventually, the GTS defense arrays will overheat, and she can land her soldiers. That will take time, however, and every minute is on our side." He paused. "Move troops to the GTS defenses and have them dig in, she may try to land soldiers near them and hack each one remotely, or plant detonation charges at their base to take them out."

Charn nodded, touching his omni-tool. "Have we heard from Lord Racek? After dealing with the last of the ruins sites and the hatchery, he was supposed to bombard a big human world."

Balak shook his head. "No. Shepard claimed he was dead. If so, that is a loss – but the main part of his plan was already completed. He bombarded Grhar II until it was a blasted rock – whatever hellish demons were in its seas must surely now be dead. His men blew up the turian hatcheries, as planned. And he killed most of the admirals backing the Hegemon already." He gave a narrow smile. "Assuming the Group of Four can draw the human fleet into battle somewhere and detonate the MED, everything has gone according to plan."

Charn nodded again, his features uneasy. "Including this mess?" He gestured out the thick window at the streaks of light raining down, each one intercepted by storms of GARDIAN laser fire. "I thought we left that pack of grays on the last human world to hold off pursuit. Didn't work. Shepard is hard-core, Balak – she isn't going to stop until we kill her, and that bitch is going to take a lot of killing – assuming we can kill her. Didn't take on Torfan, may not here."

Balak gave another smile. "As the turians say, far sight cannot see the vakar hidden in the bushes until it is upon you. We knew we might be detected, even with the enthrallment collars on the human engineers to cover our tracks. It won't be much longer until the path is set – Shepard has less than an hour to somehow overcome us all and reset the engines. No matter how fearsome she is, unless she has a trick I haven't thought of, the defenses will hold her off."

Charn folded his massive arms over his thick Fist-style armor once more. "You could have talked to Shepard, convinced her of what we're trying to do. Maybe cut some kind of deal." He tilted his head to the left. "I know she's the Pillar-damned Butcher, but if Lord Racek was right, she would understand at least some of what you've seen. I'm not scared of dying to save my people, but if we could get out alive..."

Balak stood slowly. "No. Neither she nor I are talkers. We fight, we strike, we kill, we mourn, and then we do so again. She did not defeat the enemies she has faced so far by talking at them, and in any event it is pointless. No amount of talking can change the facts of the matter. Even if she did believe my words – what can she do?"

He turned to face Charn squarely. "Do you honestly think the races of the galaxy will believe the Emperor has become a ravening monster, a slave to some ocean-bound horror, simply based on what few facts and hints I can give them? By all the Pillars, Charn. They didn't even listen to her when she had hard evidence a Reaper existed, according to Aria. No. They will assume this is a power play on the Hegemon's behalf to cripple the Alliance, or by the Emperor."

He sighed. "And whatever is in control of the Emperor is no Reaper, based on the data Racek got from Aria. A Reaper is a machine. That … thing masquerading as the Dark Gods is alive, somehow. So were the ones sleeping below the waters on Grhar II. Shepard is unlikely to see anything but the threat she knows, and we cannot afford mistakes."

Charn poked his chin several times. "I know." He gave a disgusted sigh. "I just don't like having to set up a chain of events that will get millions of my people killed and hoping the aliens don't decide to deal with us as they did the krogan...or the rachni." He paused. "My men and I are going to die – because Lord Racek and you saved us, showed us this horror. We saw the dreams, the visions. We heard the screams from the capital on the night of Black Fire. We aren't going to run."

He met the other batarian's gaze evenly, tilting his head to the left. "But I think we've come far enough for you to tell us the whole plan, and the truth. My men are tough...but they have families. Fears."

Balak shook his head. "I understand your men's fears...and their reluctance to die in ignorance. We are gambling that the outcome of events will be favorable, and it is a poor gamble." He folded his hands together. "I will tell you what I know. Racek did not explain the entire plan to me. I do know that enraging the turians was part of it. For whatever reasons, Racek felt the turians – even if enraged – would be more likely to attack Khar'shan directly than attempt to destroy our entire race."

Charn spat. "And that's why he blew up a hatchery? So he can get the damned spikes to invade us, and attack Khar'shan, toppling the Emperor?"

Balak nodded. "The humans would have tried, but even before the battle against the geth, such a war would have not been concluded quickly – they do not have the fleet strength needed to cut through the Imperial Guard. And humans are … vindictive. Petty. And weak. Any war would have dragged on for years, not toppling the Emperor. He would have grown stronger under siege, in fact, and the humans would have been content with ravaging the outer edges of the Hegemony and claiming a few dozen rich worlds as payback after killing the batarians living there before dropping the entire affair."

Charn gave a frown. "And the turians won't? You are aware they take attacks on those hatcheries as a horrible crime. They will be insane with anger."

Balak nodded. "While the Council would no doubt restrain both the humans and the turians from committing genocide, Racek said turians thought differently. Rather than waging war on the hinterlands, they would overrun Khar'shan and crush the Emperor, as long as the Hegemon is smart enough to surrender." He paused. "Turians go for the head when they strike – they will blame the Emperor for this crime no matter what he claims happened."

Charn rubbed his nose. "So. We weaken the Hegemon's fleet so he stays out of the fighting. We blow up turian hatcheries to enrage them. We EMP half the Alliance Fleet and blow up their only source of eezo, so when the war against the Emperor kicks off the Alliance can't chip in and steal our worlds. The turians get pissed, carve their way to Khar'shan, attack the Emperor...and?"

Balak smiled. "The Emperor will be forced to call upon his damnable and unholy ally, the thing found at Dis, to survive. The turian fleet will crush it, and the Emperor – and if the turians do not have the power to defeat it by themselves, they have the pull to summon aid from the asari and salarians."

Balak sighed. "At least, that is what I know. As I said...Racek did not tell me all."

Charn grimaced. "Not sure I like this plan, Balak. I do not know what Lord Racek was thinking. Why not gather information – those filthy weapons the Imperial Guard uses, the things with the wires and what not in them – and take it to the Citadel? Surely they aren't stupid enough to be that blind when evidence is in their faces?"

Balak sighed."The Council is driven by fear, not wisdom. They will not act against the Emperor, without no alternatives, as long as he helps prevent Aria and the warlords of the Traverse from expanding their power. They fear her more than him – and anything we come up with won't sway their ignorant, narrow minds." He gave a tired smile. "Besides, a batarian does not rely on the alien to forge his path, is that not what the Pillars say?

He made a gesture with his hands, one invoking the Pillars. "Either way, I have no doubts. Either we succeed or fail, but in either outcome the Emperor's power will be reduced – and we have left enough clues that hopefully the humans will figure it out. They won't be able to go after us, but if the plan fails they will still be curious, like monkeys always are."

Charn turned to leave, then paused. "Maybe. If you are wrong, Balak, then we're dying for nothing."

Balak cut him off. "If I am wrong, Charn, then our people are doomed no matter what words I say or actions I take." His voice hardened. "Get the Fist troopers out to the GTS stands quickly. Keep the rest of the men near the engines to fend off sabotage attempts."

Charn nodded again, leaving, and Balak sat back down to meditate, fixing his gaze on his small altar. "Soon, we'll be dead, and the games will truly begin."

O-ATTWN-O

Crouched in the darkness of a drop-pod, Shepard glanced at her omni-tool one final time. "Pressly, orbital burn time?"

The XO's voice was calm but had an edge to it. "Thirty seconds, ma'am. Launch angle is going to be steep, the landing will be rough. Fifteen seconds before you go out will throw chaff and every missile we can, and we're going to try to air-burst two torpedoes in ten seconds to blind their sensors."

She nodded, clicking off that circuit to hit her command line. "Everyone going for this ride, hang on tight."

There was a round of calm replies, or less than calm in the case of Dallas, and she watched blood red numbers suddenly illuminate the interior of the pod. Silence trickled past and she scowled as her legs began to cramp up slightly.

Five seconds the before launch, she heard the two DACT scream in unison. "Jump up jump up and get dooooown!"

She barely caught Liara's muttered comment of "lunatics" before the world fell out from beneath her.

Alliance drop-pods were the answer to the turian drop-assault techniques used in the FCW. Each pod had the tiniest mass effect generator possible, working hard to create a field of negative gravity, and was a composite created mostly of omnigel in shock absorbing bands, layers of thin high energy ablative coating, and a weak kinetic shield system to buffer re-entry stress.

The Kazan had to slow considerably to launch the pods, as there was no atmosphere to slow them and no soft terrain to land in, and each pod had ten pounds of mono-propellant to fire off counter-thrusters and slow the decent.

Fifteen seconds passed in the darkness, sheer terror racing through her mind. Either they'd land, or it would be over in a burst of GARDIAN fire too fast for her to even realize she was dead. The pod began to shake as the thrusters fired. At the same moment, the mass effect generator burned through its tiny eezo reserve in a last burst of energy, and the pod slammed to the ground with a jarring impact before splitting in half.

Shepard came out rolling, her suit sealed, her gaze snapping around, taking in her surroundings. The surface was bone-white powder to a depth of a few inches, cratered here and there with small circular indentations and crisscrossed with deeply pressed tire track prints. Here and there, the dust was splattered with splotches of red, or the quiet, still and shattered forms of human or batarian soldiers. Several outbuildings were smoking ruins, and one was burning brightly.

The main tower loomed directly in front of them, narrow wings spreading out from it to either side, and the giant bulk of the nearest engine blocked the sun, the blazing light of the fusion drives casting long, deep shadows in all directions. She noted the doorway into the building was shot up, and dead soldiers, batarian and human, had been tossed into piles to either side.

Her force had come down between two buildings, a gap about two hundred feet apart, while the two DACT had come down basically at the tower base. Even as she watched, Montoya leveled a lance cannon – the same one Ash had ended Saren with – and blew the doors open, Florez flinging in a belt of frag and gas grenades a moment later.

Shepard lifted her rifle. All units, move! Liara, cover us with a biotic screen! Tali, drones. Lee, Cole, point, shotguns." She moved towards the building at a run, seeing the rest of her small group follow.

A pair of batarians in heavy armor came bursting through the doors of one of the side buildings, and one of her N5's unloaded his Crossfire rifle at them, catching them dead on. The first batarian staggered, stumbling into cover, but the second jerked with the fire, blood splashing across his armor. Before he fell he lifted his own harpoon rifle and shot back, the long mass accelerated piece of metal lashing out and driving the N5 marine back with a blast of light, sending him to the ground, chest armor blown open and bits of blood and bone scattered around his body.

Shepard fired a short burst at the dying batarian, putting him down, while Liara hurled warpfire at the other one in cover, the blue luminescence tearing into the batarian's armor, rupturing its seals. He jerked away, clutching his face, and Liara gave a weak sob as she stumbled onward.

Missiles rained from above, the hard red lines of GARDIAN lasers slashing through the sky constantly. A torpedo slipped through and detonated, acetic white light blinding her for a split second, and she saw a group of batarians near a GTS tower flash into steam and dust from the blast.

More batarians were running at them now, from behind, but Senior Chief Vega turned, lifting the grenade launcher he'd brought along, firing several shots in a row. The blasts went wide, knocking a few batarians from their feet, but threw up a huge obscuring cloud of dust that covered their approach.

A batarian in the black and red armor of a Fist lieutenant burst through the cloud running at top speed. Tali opened up on him with her submachine gun, which he shrugged off. He fired back with a heavy rifle, but she slammed her omni-shield down in time to deflect the shots. From behind its cover, Dallas lifted his Crossfire rifle and fired twice, the first shot glancing off the heavy pauldron of the armor but his second blowing through the batarian's eye-panel on his helmet, sending the soldier sprawling to the ground.

Cole gave a chuckle. "Ain't missing a step, there, LT. Good shot."

Shepard reached the doors to the main tower, and with a grimace hurled the biggest pull she could at the nearest building, ripping off sections of prefab and hurling them back the way they came. Liara threw a flare as Riley and her marines rushed past, and then Vega emptied more grenades that way. The silence of the firefight was absolute in the airless environment, but Shepard felt the vibrations in her feet, and splashes of red and vague dark blurs in the dust cloud indicated they'd hit something.

She tapped her commlink, breathing fast and deep. "Move it in. Walker, you and two of the N5's hold this doorway. Lee, take the commissars and the other AIS guy and go with the DACT to find the GTS defenses."

The AIS sniper, Walker, nodded, unslinging the drone-pack he'd hauled along, and kicked off six defense drones. Tali slaved her own drones to his network, as did Liara, even as the N5's flung packets of omnigel over the doors to harden them.

The entry room of the tower was large, and splashed here and there with blood. Corpses – batarian and human – still littered the ground, and the Fist had lost more than a few soldiers storming the place. Shepard glanced around, looking for signs, and saw one reading "Central Control – Environmental and Positioning". Other doors read 'Life Support' or 'Machinery One'.

A human slumped dead in base of a set of stairs leading up, his chest pulped by a shotgun blast.

She jerked her rifle towards the doors marked Central Control. "Vega, Cole, Dallas, let's move. Tali and Liara on me." She kicked through the doors, finding another corridor, lined with lockers and netted slings holding boxes of cargo and supplies on the ceiling. More blood was splashed about, as well as bullet holes and scorch marks, and Liara made a gagging sound at the sight of two human soldiers smashed to paste in some areas against one wall. More bodies were flung around near the far end, mostly human, blasted open or smashed violently.

Blood dripped slowly from the ceiling and was flung in gory, crazed lines along the shot-up walls. The fighting had been ugly. A batarian was crumpled at the far end of the corridor, still smoking in places from whatever killed him, a huge scorch spot on the decking still glowing a cool red.

"Goddamned Fist." Cole's mutter was cold, and Shepard only nodded.

"Gotta move. Walker can't hold for long." She pushed through the corridor, pausing at the far door when she saw a flash of motion through the tiny windows set into it. She held up a hand, pausing the group, and lifted her ODIN before kicking it open and throwing a flash-bang.

The device detonated as she rolled through, ODIN in hand, and she came up firing at a blur of motion. The blast caught a charging batarian squarely in the chest, but he roared and staggered forward, burst firing with his rifle. Rounds bounced off her shields as she kanquessed out of the way of his charge, as Tali came through door, firing with her Reegar shotgun.

Plasma arched over the Fist soldier, melting his back armor to slag, and the Fist soldier fell, clutching weakly at grenades. Cole shot him in the head before he could set them off and glanced around. "Where are all the soldiers?"

Shepard looked around the room they'd entered – wide corridors lead off on three different tangents, two clean, one bloody and with more human and batarian bodies slumped in death. "No idea, Lieutenant. Balak may have figured I'd storm the guns themselves rather than the controls. I think what we do is follow the bodies."

Vega nodded, picking a det-mine off his back and dropping it just in front of the doors. "Let's leave the pendejos a party treat, no?"

She grinned, and nodded. As she moved ahead, ODIN ready, she tapped her commlink. "Riley, status."

The sound of heavy gunfire and an explosion rang into her ears, along with cursing. "Shitty, Shepard. Six Fist soldiers dug the fuck in here, and they shot the shit out of Florez, he's alive but hurt bad. Montoya is fucking them up, but we can't get any closer to the GTS controls – Commissars are trying, but the chick took a full burst in the chest and isn't in hot shape."

Shepard nodded. "Slag the fucking controls, then, if you can."

She heard the blast of a lance cannon going off, and a second explosion, and then alarms started ringing throughout the base. "Alert. Alert. Loss of defense network. Shifting to automated defense networks. Contact the Systems Alliance immediately."

Tali sighed. "Your VI's could use some work, Shepard."

Shepard didn't say anything as she burst through the far doorway of the corridor they were in, ODIN swinging around in a clear arc. The room was built up into a wide canopy, with armaglass windows overlooking the asteroid and several engines. Haptic screens on one wall displayed the asteroid flight path, while complex graphics detailed the status of the fusion reactor, fusion torch assembly, and eezo chamber.

"This must be the place. Vega, Cole, get setup. Can we shut these fucking engines down, Tali?"

Tali walked to one of the engine consoles, as Vega and Cole began setting up near the door, knocking over a table for cover. She examined the panel, tapping her omni, and hissed something in Khellish. "This isn't good, Shepard. There's some kind of encryption and a polymorphic VI protecting any changes to the program – if we mess it up, I think it will blow the engines. I'll need a few minutes and we can't make any mistakes."

Shepard gritted her teeth. "Dallas, help out. Liara, get ready."

Shepard clicked her comm again. "Walker, status." Even as she did so, what felt like bomb going off rocked the entire facility.

A few seconds later, there was a hiss of static and the line went dead before a voice spoke on her channel. "I'm afraid your AIS agent is dead, Spectre."

She recognized the voice. "Balak."

He chuckled. "Reckless and bold, moreso than expected. I thought you'd move to take out the weapons themselves. Pity about the hostages." He paused. "My lieutenant tells me I should talk this out with you."

She gritted her teeth, as Cole began setting up his Revenant machine gun in one corner to provide support fire. "It's fucking over, asshole. Your GTS defenses are coming down, even if I can't stop you we'll blow this rock to pieces. As for talking, you can talk to my goddamned shotgun."

Balak's voice sounded calm. "As I told him, we are warriors, not talkers. Make peace with your monkey gods, Spectre."

The line went dead again, and Shepard checked her gear. She clicked her commlink again."Jiong, Riley, dig in – Balak is headed your way."

Jiong's voice was dry. "I'm afraid Captain Riley is dead, Major. We took out the last of the Fist soldiers, but..." He trailed off. "We will hold the enemy as long as we can, but the GTS defenses are still firing and the Fist is still attacking. Their hacker did something to lock the console down before we could kill him, and I'm afraid my hacking skills aren't good enough to break through." He sighed. "If Balak comes here, we will stop him."

She nodded. "Jiong...you can't take a goddamned Glorious batarian."

The commissar merely gave an amused sound, almost a hum. "Only one way to find out. It has been a pleasure and an honor, Major. Sara. May our Father walk with you."

She closed her eyes, and exhaled, and clicked her comms with her team instead. "Get ready. Balak won't take long to overwhelm them. Tali, I hope you two can hack this thing fast."

Tali nodded absently, hands flying over the panel, while Dallas was busy on his own omni-tool, cursing constantly. "Where in fuck did they find a VI like this? Motherfucking shit!"

Liara glanced at Shepard. "That is hardly encouraging." She exhaled. "How will we deal with Balak? Can we fight him directly?"

Shepard bit her lip. "Glorious biotics only have two weaknesses. They aren't good at handling multiple threats at one time, and they don't have good control. His opener will probably be a warpfire blast big enough to set the entire room on fire – we have to stop that opening shot, then keep him off balance. They don't do well in close range combat. I get in close and keep him tied up, you hammer him from the sides, and Cole and Vega rip down his barrier with heavy machine gun fire."

Cole nodded. "Can't we snipe him? Shut his biotics down?"

She shook her head. "Ranges are too low for that. Disruption rounds will just piss him off, and phase disruptor grenades don't work on Glorious types, they'd just kill our own biotics. If we had a pulse dissapator that might work...maybe. Not sure." She exhaled, gripping her shotgun tight, and bit her lip. "Just … go hard."

Vega grunted, as a series of explosion rocked the base, followed by snarling animal sounds. "The hell is that?"

Even as he spoke, the doors blasted inwards in shards, and three blurred streaks of black and green erupted into the room. Shepard immediately recognized them as Khar'shan stalker beasts, semi-intelligent creatures linked to a shamanistic type called a Beastmaster. Each one was almost six feet long, with four wide, slanted black eyes, a maw full of crooked teeth, and bristly black hair with green stripes. They moved on four heavily muscled legs with a small array of sharp spikes along the spine, and roared out growls.

The first stalker pounced at Vega, who ducked under its wild leap and fired a long burst at it from his Typhoon. The shots tore through the creature, shattering its foreleg and sending it skidding across the room in a smear of red ruin. Even as he did so, Shepard and Liara fired on the other one, but it tumbled with the shots and still landed atop Vega, clawing as it did so. Cole was firing at the third beast, his fire literally sawing the creature in half, but he couldn't risk a shot to clear Vega.

The senior chief screamed in agony as the claws crushed his shoulder, carving through the armor he wore, and Liara threw a push, knocking the beast off. It slammed hard into the far wall, smashing a computer console to pieces in an explosion of sparks and smoke, and Shepard emptied two shots from her ODIN into it after kanquessing behind it, blowing smoking holes in its chest and face.

Vega gave a groan, but before Shepard could move four batarians in heavy Fist armor stormed in, firing with heavy rifles, while a fifth, wearing the red collar and tabs of an officer, lifted a plasma thrower. Cole immediately opened fire with the Revenant on that last one, heavy slugs tearing into the batarian before he could lift the weapon, shredding his legs and blowing holes in his tank and armor. Hot plasma slurry splashed over two of his men, making them jerk in agony and fall down a moment later with hideous burns carved into their backs.

The other two wasted no time, both firing immediately at Tali. The shots broke her shield and slammed her against the console, and she fell, crying out in agony as part of her suit crumpled. Dallas lifted his rifle and shot back. The shots were true, but they merely spanged off the heavier armor the batarian soldiers wore. Their return fire drove him backwards, hissing in pain as a shot went through his knee.

Liara firmed her jaw and lifted both hands. One lashed a wave of warpfire over the two batarians, making one flinch back and the other move for cover. As he did so, her other hand wrapped a lift field around them both before she gave a yell of exertion and slammed the two biotic fields together. The blast of blue light that exploded outwards ripped both soldiers apart, but knocked Shepard back to her behind, jarring her.

As she got up, reaching for her ODIN, Jiong's voice rang out across her comm, gunfire in the background. "Shepard! The Fist is charging us, but Balak isn't here, he must be headed your way!"

She had no time to react as a blast of blue hellfire melted the far walls, the door, and part of the ceiling, flaring over the room. Consoles exploded into shrapnel and flames as parts of the roof sagged and melted, collapsing down on them. Her own biotic barrier shattered like glass and she saw the rubber grip on her ODIN melt and drip over her armored gauntlet.

Her armor reacted, its sensors triggering an ablative foam spray – a recent upgrade she picked up on Pinnacle. She rolled to the side, chunks of white foam breaking off while on fire, and blind-fired her ODIN ahead, hoping to catch something.

Liara had hastily flung up a biotic barrier in front of Tali and Dallas, gritting her teeth and trembling to hold it in place against the wash of blue warp energy. Cole had ducked behind a console and avoided being hit, but the roof had collapsed around him, and he was struggling now to free himself from the half-melted wreckage.

Vega lay very still on the decking, blue fires dancing over his form.

With a final flare of light, something smashed into Liara's defenses. She gave a scream and was hurled away, Tali and Dallas diving out of the way as warpfire smashed into them and sent all three tumbling to the ground. Shepard snarled and rushed forward, throwing two flash-bang grenades and following them with a burst from the ODIN.

A bright flash burst into the room, and harsh cursing in the consonants of Khar'shan sounded, before a blade of biotic force slammed into Shepard hard enough to crumple her armor. She flew backwards, slamming into a standing console hard enough to shatter the casing, broken optronics boards and bits of electronics raining down on her as she slipped to her knees from the impact.

The burning wreckage of the entry way was parted by a pair of biotic waves, flinging debris and metal scrap to either side, and Balak stood there, alone. His dark armor was scorched, some kind of black heavy armored leather coat framing him, spattered with blood. His shoulder was scored with bits of burning metal here and there, but he was otherwise unharmed. As air hissed out of the shredded room, his helmet slid down over his features, an X-shaped mask over four eyes and a grill-like lower piece covering the rest of his face.

"Brave, but doomed." The Glorious batarian lifted the heavy SIU shotgun in his hands, stepping forward slowly, the cavernous barrel pointed straight at Shepard. "Your Commissars are giving my second in command pure hell, but he has fifteen Fist soldiers backing him up. You killed some of my best men, but the rest of my force is almost here."

Tali staggered to her feet, but Balak casually shot her one handed, the shell lashing out to slam into her cybernetic leg and blow it clean off. She gave a scream as she toppled, and Shepard used the distraction to snatch up her ODIN and fly into the kanquess, aiming to come out behind him.

She hit something, her biotic field shattering around her, sending her into an uncontrolled tumble that ended at Balak's feet. A biotic stomp to her head nearly crushed her helmet, a sharp piece of metal scoring her temple. Her ODIN skidded away as Balak kicked her over onto her back.

"The biotic charge cannot go through a barrier, Shepard." The huge SIU shotgun pointed directly at her face. Stunned and dazed from the assault, she couldn't focus her biotics enough to bring up her barrier, her Valkyrie was still stuck on her back, and her Sunfire pistol would take too long to charge.

Her mind scrambled to think on what Ahern would have drilled her to do, but all she could hear was him shouting "Be fucking unpredictable!"

"Last words?" Balak's calm voice was almost smug as he stood over her, framed in flickers of flames from his warp fire. Explosions from the ongoing battle and missile rain outside illuminated his mask in flashes of dim light.

She tilted her head. "Yeah. You planned this whole thing out pretty well...but did you invest in a cup?"

He tilted his own head, confused by the slang term, and she kicked him between the legs as hard as she could. He gave a great howl, dropping the shotgun, and she leapt up, snatching her Valkyrie off her back and firing at point blank range into his chest.

He staggered back several steps, bloodied, but she realized he'd somehow fought past the pain and got part of a barrier up at the last second. She fired again, trying to finish him off, but this time he got up a hand, and blue radiance deflected the shots.

"Insolent monkey bitch!" He roared as he flung more warpfire at her, but she answered with her barrier. That saved her from being fried, but holding the stream of energy back was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a towel, the torrential power of the blast sending her Spectre cape up in flames in a second and scoring the paint from her armor.

Balak snarled, eyes-slots glowing blue with biotic energy as he pushed out even more power, the storm of energies pushing past Shepard in a long stream, melting everything behind her. She felt her nerves scream in agony, her bio-amp heating up in the back of her neck until she thought she would scream from the pain and burning sensation. Lances of pain shot through her entire body as she coughed up blood and fell to one knee under the assault.

"And thus it ends!" With a roar he flung blades of force along with the warpfire, cutting her barrier to pieces. She screamed as the blue flames raced over her, armor screaming alarms as her leg armor caught fire. She managed to kanquess away, only for the warpfire to arch in a stream and follow her.

She tried and failed to get her barrier up, as the flames raced in. As they were about to slam into her, though, Liara finally got up, throwing a singularity at Balak, the blue orb hitting his stream of warpfire with a shattering detonation that sent the batarian flying back and Shepard back down to the ground, half blinded. Warpfire sprayed in all directions, flaring out of control in more detonations that scattered burning metal shrapnel over Balak's position, burying him.

Liara caught her in a pull and jerked her roughly behind a topped pair of servers, grabbing her arm to stop her. "Are you alright, Sara?"

She shook her head, tasting her own blood. "Exhausted. Not sure I can do anything else biotically except charge. Fucker just about cooked my ass up real bad. Where's Tali?"

Liara sighed. "Down. Dallas is somewhere behind her, still working on his omni-tool. Cole is trapped...Vega, I believe, is dead or dying."

In the distance, there was a heavy crash and pieces of wreckage went flying, as Balak tore free of whatever Liara had buried him in. Shepard grimaced. "I need you to hit him with the strongest shit you got, make him focus on you and I'll take him from behind."

Liara nodded, and leapt up, using a biotic pull and her parkour moves to vault the servers they hid behind, throwing a shockwave as she did so. The blast picked up wreckage and scrap from the room, hurling it all at Balak, who was still wincing as he walked.

With a violent swing of his hand, he knocked the wave of debris aside, blasting apart her shockwave with his own. As more biotic explosions from conflicting fields exploded, Shepard charged her Sunfire pistol, then kanquessed straight up.

She emerged thirty feet in the air. From here, she could see the command tower was a burning, crumbling wreck, the outlying wing they were fighting in now half exposed to vacuum. Batarian soldiers were approaching from all directions, but she also saw her marines and battlesuits landing, as fighters dodged past badly aimed GARDIAN strikes to dump missiles into the batarian ranks.

She had no more time to look, coming down rapidly. She took a deep breath and flung the biggest push she could muster – sadly, it wasn't very much – before gripping her pistol tightly.

The unexpected blast from above caught Balak out, sending him flailing into a stumble, his shotgun flying out of his hands. She fired four times, as fast as she could, as she fell. The first two plasma shots splattered over that almost impregnable barrier of his. The third shot missed by a hair, blasting a hole in the decking, but the fourth shot was true, and blew a gory, burning streak across his back, cutting a section out of his shoulder.

She landed, moving into a flying snap kick that rocked his head around, following up with a driving punch augmented by her unfolding omni-blade that sheared into his weapon arm. He cursed and used a push to fling her back a few steps, and then threw his arms out, splaying his fingers wide.

A series of hotly glowing blue lines lanced out, wrapping around her. Her armor blared alarms as the blue netting began melting into the surface of her suit, and she fell to the ground with her arms pinned. A second later warpfire washed over her, and the blast of a biotic explosion sent her crashing through a wall, smashing her into a wash of red and the fading blare of more alarms from her armor as she blacked out.

Liara screamed out Shepard's name, storming out of cover and hurling spears of blue light and blasts of energy. Balak calmly deflected each one with hard, quick motions – warpfire washed aside in a curve, blasts of pure energy bouncing away.

The two figures, outlined in biotic light, traded blasts back and forth, before Liara gave another yell and hurled a heavy blade of biotic force with all the strength and hate she could muster, falling to her knees in exhaustion a moment later.

Balak stopped it cold before sending back a slim blast of biotic energy. The bolt slammed into Liara's kneeling form and flung her away bonelessly, ending with her smashing into and through the nearest wall, tumbling to the ground outside with blood splashed inside her cracked faceplate.

The batarian sighed, and turned to face Dallas, still crouched by the main computer, frantically working his omni-tool. Even as Balak raised a hand, the computer's screen shifted from red-gray to blue-green, and the asteroid began to shake.

Balak paused. "You hacked it?"

Dallas' face could be seen through the faceplate of his armor, a defiant grin and a tired, empty look on his face. "Yeah, well. It's what I do. Maybe they'll give me a medal at my funeral."

The batarian nodded. "A waste. I salute you, brave human." He lifted his hand and warp fire poured fourth, rushing over the human until the cracked, charred wreckage fell from within the burning stream. Dallas's lower body was intact, but everything from his chest up was little more than melted metal, polymer and cooked bones.

As Balak headed to the computer, Cole finally tore free of the wreckage around him, immediately firing his weapon at Balak. The bullets did nothing, ricocheting off the Glorious' biotic barrier, but Balak paused to face him.

"Do you not see, fool monkey? I cannot be stopped." With a flare of blue, Cole was torn from his corner, gun flying out of his hands as his body snapped through the air, Balak catching him around the neck to hoist him effortlessly into the air. "I crushed your Spectre, her wife, and your entire assault. It's over."

Cole sneered, even as Balak's biotic-enhanced strength began to crush his neck armor and choke him. "Daddy...said...never over...till... fat...lady sings."

Balak gave a snort. "Quaint."

Cole's free hand came from behind his back and dropped the heavy eezo-based grenade he'd been clutching, the words 'Fat Lady' painted in white on the heavy black casing, a second before the blast went off at point blank range. The barrier field shattered as Cole flipped head over heels to land heavily on his legs, one shattering as he landed, splintering bones driving through his thigh.

Balak screamed, staggering back, eezo residue splattered over him and eating through his armor, roaring in pain and fury before using his biotics to fling it all off of him. It landed in blobs on the floor, sizzling with heat, and he began to choke as his suit was compromised.

Pulling out a tube of omnigel, the batarian broke it open and smeared it over the cracks and holes in the suit, taking several seconds to do while nodding to himself. "Still time to reset the engines."

A comet-like blast of red flashed past his face, smashing the engine controls into a burning pile. Balak spun on his heel to see Shepard tear herself free of the wall he'd flung her into. Her armor was battered and broken, but she kept her aim steady as she fired again, this time at him.

He laughed as her shots splattered impotently against his biotic barrier. "There is no weapon greater than I, monkey."

She flung the gun away as she staggered forwards, biotic fire lining her hands, flaring from her body in hard waves.

"You killed my men. Hurt my wife. I'm going to fucking end you."

Balak spread his hands. "You killed my men and my species is on the line, yet all I hear is words."

She limped forward, fist clenching. "I'm done talking." She flashed into a kanquess, slamming into him, and they skidded across the floor.

She drove a biotic punch into his chest armor, splintering it, as he slammed his elbow across her face. She felt her helmet deform, smashing her nose, and didn't care. Liara was hurt. That was the only thought repeating across her skull.

She had to help Liara. The only thing keeping the ravening monster of the Butcher from consuming her completely was the feel of Liara's pain, knowing Shepard know she was still alive.

She punched and kicked, and took hits she knew she had no ability to take. She felt a rib snap, and spat blood as she triggered her omni tool and stabbed Balak in the leg. She knew she should try and take him alive, but anger and rage clouded her vision, and instead she stabbed again, and again, and again.

She could hear him laughing, blood frothing from the shattered faceplate as she slashed her blade towards his face. He caught her hand and with a twist and a biotic shear, broke her wrist, then her forearm, before wrenching her around and off the top of him. She slammed hard into the battered, scarred decking, a second before a blue-glowing fist crunched into her chest.

She felt blood trickling – a shard of something hot and metal slicing into her right nipple. A dull pain from kicks as she staggered to her feet somehow. Ahern's long drills in martial arts letting her block the flying punches, but she was caught out when he used some kind of lift to take her legs out from under her.

A series of thundering punches slammed into her stomach, and she coughed and gagged as bile was driven into her mouth. She blocked a fourth punch with her unbroken arm, and hooked a heel behind his, using her weight to tip him off balance. As he stumbled, she was able to duck under the warp-enhanced haymaker he threw at her and slam her knife-hand into the space between Balak's helmet and suit, crushing his throat.

He stepped back, coughing, clutching at his throat, and Shepard smiled grimly. She had one shot at stopping him, and it had worked on the last Glorious batarian she fought.

She kicked out his knee, making him stagger, and before could react brought her hand around to the back of his neck, warpfire flaring. Balak screamed as her hand tore through his armor, searing the folds at the back of his neck and destroying his bio-amp while severing the air feed from his armor.

He fell to his knees, and she smiled coldly. "Time to die, jackass." Balak's head tilted, and he seemed to nod at her, as if encouraging her as she curled her good hand into a fist wreathed in warpfire.

But as her hand fell to end it, a black-gloved hand caught her wrist, red-trimmed black armor embossed with a red star staring down at her. Balak glanced to one side, and a neural mace smashed in the back of his head, sending him to the ground bonelessly.

Shepard had enough strength to whisper "Why?"

Jiong's voice was tired and empty, his armor bloodied and rent in areas, one hand still holding Shepard's wrist, his other hand still clutching his neural mace. "We need him alive. We have won. The planet is safe. It is time to see to our wounded and dead."

Shepard wanted to say something about Liara, but before she could say anything the Commissar, his face visible through the dark faceplate, gave an apologetic smile and shoved something into the medical port of her armor.

Everything went black.

O-ATTWN-O

"Status, Doctor?"

Doctor Sedanya shot the figure of Pressly a vile look before continuing to work with the laser scalpel in her hands. "It is still touch and go. We are completely overloaded and I don't have facilities for all the wounded."

She paused, tapping her omni-tool. "I just sent you the current status of all the wounded. Are we going to be getting support soon?"

Pressly folded his arms. "Medical shuttles from Neo Berlin are docking right now – work crews are still clearing the hangar bay. Tag which ones are the most hurt and we'll get them down on the first shuttle. Neo Berlin has full medical facilities for mining injuries and burns."

The asari doctor nodded. "Shepard, T'Soni, Cole, and D'Alte, definitely. We'll work on Tali'Zorah up here in her clean room, and …" She paused, finishing her cut, before tearing open a packet of medical omnigel and slotted into a programming tray, loading the nanites embedded in it to seal up blood vessels. "... probably the other AIS agent."

Pressly nodded. "I'll make sure they have a clear lane to get here, ma'am. What about our captive?"

Sedanya sighed. "Shepard tore him up pretty badly. He was suffering from O2 depletion by the time Jiong got him up here. Flash burns, Depressurization wounds. A badly torn and leaking suit in vacuum does that. Shepard melted his bio-amp and there's several critical wounds in his torso. I'm keeping him sedated, but … I'm not an expert on batarians. If you want him to live long enough to interrogate, I'd get someone specialized up here to examine him."

Pressly nodded. "Well, thank you, Doctor. If you need anything, let me know." He left the medical bay, a weight on his shoulders like he was hauling stones. Everything was a mess, and he had a dozen different parties screaming at him for answers.

He reviewed the omni-tool data about the medical status of the various officers and crew members as he walked towards the elevators, grimacing at the body count. Shepard would probably blame herself for that, but they'd all done the best they could.

He turned into the commons, still headed for the elevators, and slowed. The tired, battered figure of Commissar Jiong sat in the ship's mess, his greatcoat missing, dressed only in rumpled SA fatigues, sans sash or hat. Ugly burn marks on his right cheek and hand were hastily dressed, and his cybernetic leg was being fiddled with by one of the ship engineers as he leaned against a wall, slowly sipping water. He glanced up as Pressly approached, eyes flat and cold.

"Yes, commander? I presume you were able to get an update from Doctor Sedanya?"

Pressly checked his omni, taking a deep breath. "Shepard and her team are in bad shape. Lieutenant Dallas is dead. Senior Chief Vega is in a medical coma. Captain Riley, Agent Walker and all three N5's in Beta Squad are dead. We lost three battle-suits and one of the MAKOs along with all of Delta squad securing the asteroid. Tali is stable but shaky, her leg is blown off – the cybernetic one, thankfully."

He rubbed his hand over his brow. "Captain von Khar is in critical condition and already being treated on the surface. The prisoner is critical and may die without additional aid. Right now...we're touch and go with many of the wounded."

Jiong nodded. "Do you have an update on Commissar D'Alte, commander?"

Pressly frowned, and tabbed through the omni again, finally nodding. "Hurt bad, she took shots to the liver and lungs. She's in serious condition but mostly stable. I've got her tagged on the first flight down to Neo Berlin's hospitals. All we can do besides pray is wait for the doctors to get things in hand."

The muscles in Jiong's jaw danced but he said nothing for a long moment, and when he did speak his voice was tight and stressed. "I can only hope prayer makes a difference. What is our next course of action?"

Pressly exhaled and folded his arms. "That's … something you should decide. We've got multiple incoming calls from Command, and I don't know if I should deal with them or you. I'm not exactly briefed for high-level interactions like you've been training the Major to deal with."

Jiong glanced at his damaged cybernetic leg and sighed. "It is probably better if you speak to any incoming requests. You are more familiar with the needs of the battlegroup, and I fear I am not … calm. Or stable." He shook his head. "My only advice is simple: we brought along sixty feet of pulse dissipation cording, enough to stop a matriarch. I would strongly suggest wrapping that Balak bastard up in in it and sending for a Commissariat Special Interrogations unit."

Pressly nodded slowly. "Alright. I'll do that. Although Shepard burned out his bio-amp, according to the doc. He should be powerless."

Jiong gave a tired smile. "After that demonstration of power, do you want to take the chance he can still throw biotics? I do not." He let his gaze drop, staring at the decking, and Pressly thought the man was near to collapse or breakdown. He'd never seen a Commissar look so defeated.

Pressly nodded. "Yes, better safe than sorry." He narrowed his eyes. "Are you going to be able to hold yourself together, Commissar?"

Jiong gave a tired, negligent wave. "I will survive and endure, commander. My conditioning will ensure that. I am merely … fatigued. Yes. Do not worry yourself on my account – please, attend to your duties."

Pressly did so with trepidation, his stomach twisting on the way up the elevators and the walk to the CIC and then Shepard's stateroom. He felt like an interloper sitting in Shepard's stateroom, turning on her comms repeater and instructing Traynor to patch him through to Alliance Command. The split view screen displayed President Windsor, Fleet Master Dragunov, High Admiral Branson, and a high ranking Commissar or Commandant he did not recognized.

That was more brass than Pressly had ever seen in one place in his life, and he nearly automatically stood and came to perfect attention. He tried to keep his voice even and calm as he spoke. "Battlegroup Kazan reporting in. Commander Pressly speaking. Operation successful."

Dragunov was the first to speak, eyes narrowed. "At ease, Commander. Where is Major Shepard? If she is injured, where is Captain von Khar?"

Pressly forced his face to absolute stillness. "Major-Commander Shepard is in critical condition and so is Captain von Khar. With the approval of the ship's political officer, I'm taking interim command of the battlegroup until you provide me with further orders or tasking."

Branson nodded. "Very good, commander. What is the current situation?"

Pressly folded his arms. "Stable. The major and her forces were able to storm the asteroid and reprogram the engines to prevent it from hitting Neo Berlin. The asteroid is currently in an unstable orbit that will decay into an impact with the large gas giant in the system in eleven months." He exhaled. "All Eldfell personnel aboard the asteroid were dead when we arrived or shortly thereafter. According to the marines we sent down, it looks like they went out fighting."

Pressly paused to see if he'd be interrupted. Branson nodded, turning to one side. "Comms Sergeant Atiss, get Eldfell-Ashland on the line and let them know they need to send a repair crew down to the asteroid and fix it's orbit up." He turned back to Pressly. "Continue, commander."

Pressly nodded, taking a calming breath. "Major Shepard landed on the asteroid and managed to defeat Balak, but we've taken severe damage to both the fleet and our ground forces. The Chiron is not battle worthy at the present time and if there are more batarians in the area this system is defenseless. Our medical facilities will be offloading the wounded to Neo Berlin soon, but we still have a shortage of omnigel for repairs and the Kazan's engines are barely functional."

Dragunov gave a curt nod. "Hold your position and take whatever actions are necessary to preserve lives. What's left of Major Solez's battlegroup under Commodore Volk is en route to you, ETA less than half an hour. As soon as we get an update from Admiral Hackett, we'll cut more ships your way, including a repair vessel and a medical frigate. Until then, maintain over-watch as best you can."

Pressly nodded. "The Commissar said I should request a … Special Interrogations unit. For Balak. We captured him."

The Commandant spoke for the first time. "Ah. Very good. Major Chisholm will be along directly with the specialist and her handlers."

The president also finally spoke. "We appreciate the detailed update. Inform us directly when Shepard is stable and capable of communication. Convey our deep appreciation for a job well done to the Major...and our sorrow at her losses of men."

Pressly gave a deep bow. "Yes, Your Majesty."

Dragunov's weary voice suddenly hardened. "Admiral Branson – flash traffic incoming from Hackett's fleet. Looks...bad."

Branson nodded. "Commander, we'll be in touch. Command out."

The four feeds went dead, and Pressly sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Maybe a promotion isn't such a hot idea after all."

O-ATTWN-O

Shepard awoke to a feeling of pain over most of her body, and the faint feeling of Liara's mind against her own. The latter immediately calmed her down, and she tried opening her eyes, only to slam them shut again at the pain that caused.

The waspish voice of Doctor Sedanya pierced the darkness. "Oh, good. You woke up. I thought you might have actually killed yourself off this time – I begin to understand why Doctor Chakwas said you were 'suicidal and stubborn'."

Gentle hands helped Shepard sit up slightly, and a cup of water was put to her cracked lips. She sipped slowly, thankful as it made her throat feel less like sandpaper, and managed to whisper. "Status."

The asari doctor gave a long sigh. "You'll have plenty of time to figure that out later, Major. The short version is we won, Balak is captured, but we lost some good people." Her voice grew softer. "Lieutenant Dallas is the one, according to Tali, who managed to hack the engines – he died on his feet in true marine fashion, without fear, smiling in defiance of that monster."

Shepard bit her lip. She'd never really liked Dallas, thinking him a lazy skirt chaser with too much creativity and not enough duty. But when it really counted, the man had gone out as proud as any other member of the Solguard could have – dying to save millions.

"He would have hated me for this, but he should be awarded the Star of Terra for what he did, doc."

Sedanya patted her shoulder. "Yes, he certainly should." She pushed Shepard back down against the pillows. "Rest, Major. You were almost dead, with broken ribs, a completely ruined arm, enough burns to cook up an entire feast and a crack in your skull. You'll need two or three days to recover from the beating you took before you start worrying about other things."

Shepard wanted to protest, but the slow hiss of machinery around her somehow stole her strength before she could do so.

She didn't come back to full consciousness for almost two days, and awoke coughing, to find herself wrapped in bone and tissue regen machines around her chest, leg, and both arms. She glanced around, finding herself not in the Kazan's med-bay but a large hospital room, with a sleeping and bandaged Liara resting on the hospital support bed next to her.

A window on the far wall let in sunlight, the sky beyond a strange purple color rather than blue. Even as she pondered this, the door opened and a human male in a lab coat stepped in.

"Major Shepard? I'm Doctor John Veysand. How are you feeling?"

She groaned. "Why do you people always ask me that? I feel like a pack of elcor did a mating dance on my head. I'm in a crappy bed shoved full of things in places they don't belong and I need a cigarette."

The doctor chuckled. His features were evenly handsome, with gray frosting his neatly cut black hair, his eyes a hard gray that clashed with his otherwise gentle features. "You'd be surprised at the answers we get to that question. You've been out two days. Your own vitals are doing much better, I'm just going to ask you a few questions before we let you get up a bit, to make sure you're not concussed."

She nodded sourly, but held up a hand. "Before we do that, what's Liara's status?"

The doctor gave a comforting smile. "Exhaustion, burns and a bad concussion. She'll be fine, but asari recover from concussions more slowly than humans. No one who was alive when we picked your teams up is going to die on my watch, Major, if I can help it. We have every doctor on the planet helping your people, and no expense is being spared to save their lives. We owe you our own. I can't promise anything...but we are doing our best, and I think everyone will pull through."

He folded his arms. "Now...the quicker we answer my questions, the quicker I get you out of that regeneration rig."

She sighed, and after five minutes of inane questions to determine if she was concussed, she was cleared to 'move around', and by that he meant 'wander slowly around the room in a paper gown that didn't cover her ass.' He did take off the regenerators, but warned her about moving quickly before departing.

She asked the nurse who came into check on her later about her omni-tool, and she got it brought to her an hour later. She checked for orders, finding none, and then began comming Pressly. It took her a few tries to get through, and she figured he was probably under siege by people wanting updates.

When she finally got through to him, his barked out his name harshly, and then apologized when he saw who was calling. She gave a small laugh. "It's fine. No one will tell me much here in the hospital...what's the damage and our status?"

Pressly sounded stressed and tired, but his voice was still firm. "Not great, ma'am. AIS is on the scene, along with a pack of Commissars, including an asari commissar – they're planning on interrogating this Balak guy when and if he wakes up. You're on Neo Berlin in their biggest hospital, I'm stuck up here on the Kazan, trying to find repairs and coordinating the battlegroup while being run ragged by inquiries from Admiral Dragunov."

She chuckled tiredly. "Isn't it fun?"

He gave a long sigh. "No, ma'am, it is not fun. Our orders are to wait until you're stable enough to take nominal command and then report back to Arcturus. I've been told Ahern is sending someone to bring you more clear orders directly." His voice faded a bit. "Nothing else of note to report, ma'am."

Shepard nodded. "Alright. You've always kept things smooth when I get my ass shot off, I trust you to do it now. I need you to do one thing for me. Can you forward me the casualties list?"

Pressly sighed. "Yes, ma'am." He paused. "Regarding the letters of condolence...I could handle that if you liked..."

She shook her head. "No. This was my call, my plan. If people died, that's on me."

She gave a faint sigh as the list of names came in – she had expected more. She'd lost almost a hundred sailors and five officers in the space battle alone, plus six fighters. Von Khar was in a coma. The entire fifty-six man crew of the stealth frigate was dead. Two of her frigates would need months in drydock, and one of the destroyers was venting radiation to the point it had to be abandoned.

The ground assault cost her nineteen marines, three battle-suits, and the death of Lieutenant Dallas, Captain Lee Riley, AIS Agent Walker, three N5 marines, and two more fighters. Of her remaining marine forces, all but nine were wounded, and six were wounded badly enough that they'd need cybernetics. Two more were in medical comas.

Delta squad and Beta Squad were effectively gone. Cole was injured badly, his leg injuries gruesome enough that he might need cybernetic correction. Susan and Vega were both damn near dead. Liara was stable but had broken bones and a bad concussion from being flung through walls, as well as a broken leg. Tali'Zorah had an infection of some kind from a suit breach and would require surgery to repair and reattach her cybernetic leg.

The Fist had gone down to the asteroid with ninety soldiers – more than half had died taking it out, and Shepard's people had killed the rest. Not a single defender or asteroid staff member had survived – the few not killed in the assault had been executed by Balak when her assault had started.

She set the padd down gently, rubbing her eyes. A great, deep weariness seemed to fall away from her, and she found herself staring at her hands. She'd honestly expected way worse.

A part of her idly wondered why she didn't feel like she usually did – wracked with guilt – while the rest of her examined her actions. She'd done the best she could – she had the best gear this time, good weapons, no one forcing her into stupid tactics. They'd taken out an equivalent-sized force of the Fist of Khar'shan with fewer losses.

No thanks to her, they'd even captured Balak alive.

She glanced over at Liara, still sleeping, an oxygen mask over her features, and sighed, the only other sounds in the room the beep of medical machinery.

She thought about her losses as clinically as she could. She'd been expecting a blood bath. Was something wrong with her for being happy she 'only' lost over a hundred and fifty lives?

She was about to pull down the Alliance databases for the dead and figure out how many letters of condolence she'd need to write up when the door chimed. She lifted her head as it opened, and two nurses – one asari, one human – came through the door, followed by the squat, blunt figure of Admiral Mikhailovich.

The two nurses began attending to the medical machinery – Liara's nurse doing something with the IV lines on her arm, Shepard's nurse giving her a calm smile and inserting new packets of medication to the equipment next to her bed – while the admiral took off his garrison cap and sat wearily on the small chair across from the bed. "Major. Brains not scrambled too badly?"

She gave a narrow smile. "No, sir." She paused. "Chiron is attached to Second Fleet, so...why send you?"

He nodded. "Hackett would have sent one of his own people – you don't answer to Fifth Fleet any more – but he's still sorting out shit. The Second Fleet ate an EMP bomb chasing those two batarian admirals and things are fucked." He smiled thinly. "I have some kind of fancy-ass coded orders from the Presidential Office of Communications I'm supposed to transmit to your omni, not that they bothered to tell me what the shit said orders are." He tapped his omni-tool, and her own beeped sullenly before flashing a haptic message panel up.

The usual red and black graphics displayed, a short message. "CLEARANCE TANTALUS SEVEN. No assets available for direct contact at this time. Report to Arcturus Station upon medical release of all required crew members. Council has identified possible locations of Ylana. Be aware political situation is highly volatile – if Admiralty gives you orders aside from return to Arcturus Station, report all details to Office of Presidential Communication before execution."

She blew out a breath, killing the message. "Yay." She glanced at Mikhailovich. "So...how did everything else turn out?"

The admiral waited until the nurses finished and left the room to speak. "A clusterfuck, basically. Racek was killed, and we weren't able to capture the dreadnought before the squint crew got the scuttling charges off. It's mostly intact, but a gutted wreck and the AIS isn't finding much data we can use. Solez got her ass beaten, and three of her girls are dead, two more will never fight again, and she lost damn near half her battlegroup."

He grimaced. "Ross took out two of the admirals, lost two destroyers and a frigate doing it. Chased the other two into what was supposed to be a trap, Hackett jumping in with parts of Second Fleet to cut them off. Like I said, the bastards blew some kind of super-heavy EMP bomb. All those ships are still stuck way out on the edge of Alliance space, it's going to take weeks to repair all the damage and get the engines working, much less the computers. That's a good billion credits down the drain. Means we're spread thinner than ever, we can't even strike back at the bastards right now."

She nodded. "What happened to the batarian admirals? Did we capture them?"

Mikhailovich sighed. "Blowing the bomb blew up their ships. So far, the only 'win' out of this mess has been your group, although you didn't get off scott-free either. Thank God you stopped that rock from smashing Neo Berlin." He gave her a wry smile. "Your fan club is getting bigger. The governor of Neo Berlin wants the Pope to make you a saint or some shit."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "So now what happens? The order packet you just sent me says I need to head out to Arcturus ASAP, but most of my people are still hurt and my ships are a hot mess. The Kazan's not really in shape for a fight...and I'm not going anywhere until Liara wakes up."

Mikhailovich gave a shrug. "I couldn't give a shit one way or another. I got ordered to ship out this way with my scout flotilla to secure the system and try to get some kind of read on what the hell the Hegemony is up to. The Council is foaming at the mouth and the turians are about six seconds from pulling the trigger on a 'pacification' fleet to go after the batarians – some of Racek's people blew the shit out of some kind of egg and baby hospital, which is a big no-no, and the idea they'd drop rocks on a garden world like Neo Berlin pisses off everyone." He snorted. "What a pack of idiots. The turians are going to carve the Emperor's ass into pieces for this shit."

Shepard shook her head. "I don't think Balak was working for the Emperor or Hegemon. He was dropping hints like the Emperor was messed up somehow, and what we found on New Louisiana almost sounds like they're tied up with... " She trailed off. She didn't know if Mikhailovich was part of the command briefed on the truth behind the Reapers, and this wasn't the time to bring him up to speed. She finished quietly. "...well, the same kind of shit Saren and Benezia were messing with. Old, dangerous technology."

Mikhailovich folded his arms. "That's not good. Right now, the President really wants to kick in the Emperor's teeth, but we're not in any kind of position to do so. The asari and salarians don't want to have the turians go in and blow the Emperor's head off for some bullshit political reasons that make no sense to me, but I don't know how long that will last – they're more pissed than anything I've ever seen before." He sighed. "But the bottom line is that whatever happens, the Alliance is on the sidelines for the most part. We're not going to invade the Hegemony on the say-so of some terrorist nutjob and get thrown off the fucking Council just after we got on the damned thing."

She shrugged. "Not saying we should … but if we have a legit excuse to ask hard questions, and we get bullshit answers, it may be worth a look. The last goddamned thing we need is the batarians pulling anything right now. "

Mikhailovich stood. "That's a call for the big boys to make, Shepard. The orders I have for you now are pretty simple: you've got five days recovery before you need to move out. If you can't get some of your ships moving by then, Command needs to know so they can send a ship to pick you up."

He paused. "I have a recommendation from Commander Pressly that one of your men be awarded the Star of Terra posthumously. I'll need confirmation before I route that to Hackett for you – I answer to Ahern now, but I'm not sure who you answer to in Second Fleet since everything is a damned mess and this isn't the time to bother with that shit."

She nodded. "Lieutenant Anthony Dallas. Former Solguard. My supply officer. He was the one who saved the colony, sir – he hacked the asteroid engines to a new orbit...and Balak killed him."

Mikhailovich nodded back, face drawing into a grim mask. "I'll get that ball rolling. For what it's worth, Major? Taking out that many Fist assholes and a Glorious batarian with the kind of losses you did is damn near amazing. I've seen those fuckers laugh off squad machine gun fire to kill their enemy. Your people did you proud, and you did the Alliance proud."

She sighed. "Thank you, sir. I'm not beating myself up over it too much, I was expecting worse. I just hate losing people."

The admiral put his cap back on, pugnacious features twisting. "We all do. It's never easy, and when it becomes easy to write the letters to the families then you are fucking up and need to retire or sit behind a desk in a non-line command position. But no one is going to scream at you for throwing your men away this time, Shepard. You and yours saved not just millions of people on this world, but tens of millions who would have starved if we ran out of eezo for the food shipments headed back to Sol, and stopped thousands of people from being enslaved or butchered if the fleet was out of fuel unable to stop the slavers and pirates."

He headed to the door, stopping to look over his shoulder. "Take it as a win and keep moving forward, Major." He left a moment later, leaving her lost in thought, until the sound of Liara giving a faint moan jolted her from her thoughts.

She levered herself out of the bed, wincing at the pain radiating up her ribs and leg, shuffling over to touch Liara's hand gently. "Li?"

The asari's eyes fluttered open, unfocused, flickering around. "Sara? What happened?" She groaned. "Everything is rather … sore."

Shepard gave a small, weak laugh. "Everything is fine. We're fine. Colony is safe. Balak got captured."

Liara nodded weakly before closing her eyes. "Well. That is good …" She paused, hand gripping Shepard's more tightly. "Why do you feel so … relieved, but sorrowful?"

Shepard let her head fall, black hair obscuring her features, and gave a bitter smile. "As usual, victory didn't come without a cost."


	31. Chapter 31 : Bring Down the Sky III

**A/N:** _I spent a few days working on a crackfic, mostly because I was trying to figure out all the political background involved in the aftermath of Bring Down the Sky, which we never really got to see in the game. Also, because Ahern. __  
_

_Yes, that is a reason. _

_I hesitated on including this kind of back-scatter information, because it doesn't really advance anything in ATTWN (although most of this will rear it's head again in ME2, trust me). The tipping factor in including it was that it gave bits of insight into a number of events and people that I haven't really covered, and a bit more foreshadowing. _

_It will also help explain why certain balls were dropped regarding certain events, which should help to close one minor plot hole never really answered by the games - if there are information available about the batarians messing with Reaper tech (based on what was on Kejii's graybox) and if there was a tracking operation to find Leviathan, SOMEONE should have had the sense to put two and two together in regards to figuring out the Batarians were up to something. FFS they even had a recording about the Batarians recovering a Reaper from the planet and did nothing? _

_I can believe the Alliance would hesitate to declare open war, but even IF they assumed Shepard was just batshit insane in regard to the Reapers, the fact that the BATARIANS were taking it seriously should have raised red flags all over the place. Then again, the opening of ME3 and the Admirality Board asking a goddamned commander what the shit to do now that the Reapers were already in Sol System showed me canon Alliance Command was probably staffed with retards. _

* * *

_'The difference between batarian politics and krogan politics is that the krogan are polite enough to not eat their own kind after a disagreement.'  
_

_\- Accumulated Writings of Doctor Ganar Okeer, as recovered by Urdnot Shepard Grunt  
_

* * *

Kul'halak Bairak was not having a pleasant day.

On paper, he was the Hegemon, the iron fist of the Emperor's immortal will. On paper, the endless gleaming legions of the Fist of Khar'shan bowed to him, the mighty batarian fleets shining spears answered to his barest whisper, the deadly ranks of the SIU crushed any opposition below their steel-shod boots. On paper, he was the most powerful batarian alive – even the Emperor and his Imperial Guard could not topple him from his perch, dominating all under him.

On paper.

In practice, the Fist was scattered all over creation, the generals of the SIU had made it clear they would answer to the Emperor first and only, and his so-called power was almost gone, along with the fleet strength that he'd so carefully built over the years. He had been expecting treacherous actions from many corners, but not from a figure like Ivthak Racek, who had for years languished in the outskirts of the Hegemony and seemed like a soft-hearted fool.

On paper, Racek's little rebellion should have been crushed in hours. In practice, it spelled the death knell of the Hegemony.

Bairak sighed, looking out the magnificent armaglass windows of his vast office upon the Sky Spire, looking down at the storm-swirled surface of Khar'shan. By long-agreed mutual consent, the Hegemon and most of the Hegemon-caste families lived upon the surface of Khar'shan's single moon, Ivtha. Its once lifeless surface had been terraformed and sculpted into a might military redoubt, a fleet anchorage rivaling anything on Thessia or Palaven.

The Emperor, atop his Throne of Black in the Palace of Endless Might, ruled Khar'shan, while the Hegemon ruled the Hegemony. He didn't know why his ancestors decided living on Khar'shan itself was a bad idea, only that the seven Hegemon families tried to avoid going to the planet, as best they could, and hand for over a century.

On paper, such a division was merely ceremonial. In practice, it was absolute. And that isolation was most likely going to cost the Hegemon his life, if he couldn't find a way out of the trap.

The richness of his office – shimmerweave carpets and Thessian silk rugs, expensive lea wood from Sur'kesh, looted art from a dozen worlds, and the curved desk, bought from Aria's people, that had the latest optronic and haptic displays – they were as ash compared to the bitterness in his mouth right now. All the luxury in the world wouldn't change the fact that there was every likelihood the Hegemony would be smashed to pieces by aliens in the near future, and all of his power on paper meant nothing in the real world.

Racek and his rebellion had been destroyed, but not at the hands of the Hegemon or the Fist, but by filthy monkeys. In doing so, not only had he ruined the power base the Hegemon depended on, he had also dealt a deathblow to the carefully crafted propaganda that Bairak used to dominate the people of the Hegemony. He'd done immense damage to the painstaking detente the Hegemon had forged with the Council Races.

And the blasted traitor had set a final trap for him – sleeper agents had detonated the mass cores on all five of his remaining dreadnoughts, leaving them large, expensive and immobile floating batteries of no use to anyone. Thousands of his best, most loyal men were dead, and the core detonations would cost tens of millions of credits to fix – not to mention facilities and items the Hegemony no longer had, thanks to the damned embargo.

The escorts of said dreadnoughts – the better part of eighty percent of his forces – were also crippled. Half of his fleet admirals had already ignored his missives and traveled directly to Khar'shan, to throw themselves upon the Emperor's mercy.

Despite himself, he felt his lip curl in amusement. The Emperor would not understand mercy as anything but a swift, painful death followed by eating the remains of those fool enough to fail him. Trying to pretend they had always been loyal to the Emperor now would only earn them his scorn. The ugly reality – that the fleet was going to be crippled for three to four months, possibly as long as two years, was a reality the Hegemon didn't want to face.

Without the fleet to stand off the Emperor's power, the Hegemon was vulnerable. And Bairak didn't really think it would take the Emperor three days to move on that, much less three months.

The batarian fleet was a shambles, except for the ships of the Imperial Guard, which glimmered in the light of Khar'shan's sun with a fell, grim dark radiance. The strange metals the Emperor had mined on the nearby water world of Ambuia were kept secret and held back from the Fist, and the Hegemon had no idea if they were stronger or just looked pretty. Those ships would have been difficult to overcome even if the Hegemon's ships were all in working order. Worse still, the Hegemon had literally not a single ship heavier than a light cruiser available in system right now, while the Imperial dreadnought was still in orbit, and more than capable of reducing the Sky Spire to rubble.

The Hegemon turned away from the window, disgusted. How he'd let such things slip past him over the years was a mix of arrogant dismissal of the Emperor and lack of appreciation of the dangers. The strange gear and ships had started appearing not long after the rise of the current Emperor and that strange business on Dis, where the Imperial Guard had executed an entire batarian science team and thrown every other non-Imperial batarian out of the system. That had been eight years ago, and in that time the Hegemon had seen strangeness beyond compare.

Veterans of the Fist stationed on Khar'shan had begun seeing nightmarish visions – some went mad, others, with glassy smiles on their faces, simply seemed to lay down and die. The Imperial Guard began sporting strange new weapons and armor, even while communication from the Palace became sporadic. What communications he did get were bizarre, and he'd watched as the Imperial Fleet withdrew itself to protect only Khar'shan and three other water worlds, even while the Hegemony's fleets spread themselves increasingly thin to protect the rest of their territory.

Stories of hellish experiments under the Palace, he'd ignored. Rumors of strange lights in the night skies of Khar'shan – low-caste superstition. He'd seen a great many things happening below, but he was firmly convinced it was nothing but more mythological rumor-mongering at the hands of the Emperor, to prop up his own fake divinity. It wasn't like the Emperors of the past had not done so before, attempting to portray their power as from the Dark Gods directly.

He sighed, cursing himself for a fool. He'd been too absorbed in his low-key war with the humans, trying to find a method to neutralize their Corsairs, and convinced the Emperor was merely falling into a state of seclusion as they often did, to meditate and speak with the Dark Gods.

Then the day came that fool of a mid caste had tried to assassinate the Emperor. The heavy sniper rifle had been well chosen, the shots masterfully placed. The Emperor had staggered, bright blood exploding from his chest.

And then he had begun to laugh and straightened, strange blue and white energies forming over the wound, until it sealed shut without a scar, his very clothing weaving itself back together. The Emperor had merely beckoned, and atop his sniper's perch, the assassin had leapt to his feet screaming, clutching his head and trying to, of all the horrors, claw out his own eyes.

Then the Emperor had clenched his fist, and blood sprayed from the assassins mouth and nose as he toppled to the ground four stories below. The Hegemon had seen the autopsy. Even with the damage from the fall, the cause of death was an aneurysm that had literally pulped the assassin's brain.

The Emperor's wrath grew after that – any rebellion was heresy against the Dark Gods, punished with flame and terror. The population of Khar'shan grew strangely weary and sickly, children being still born and twisted. The plants and animals around the Lake of the Pillars withered and began to die, while the Pillars themselves almost seemed to pulse with energy if you looked at them too long.

The Hegemon had listened patiently, eight months ago, as Ivthak Racek and Morak Uthesn told him of what they'd found – some secret operation on Dis, the recovery of some ancient biological warship, the brutal execution of the entire staff of scientists once they discovered the thing was alive. The finding of more such creatures, hibernating and wounded but not dead, upon several nearby water worlds.

The Hegemon had laughed at their fantasy tales and nearly had them arrested. On paper, it sounded ridiculous.

On paper.

The door to his office opened, the slender figure of Vutank, his aide, stepping through. "Mighty One...there is more bad news."

The Hegemon waved a black-gloved hand. "Speak."

Vutank's eyes closed as he did so, speaking slowly. "The Council has not determined a course of action, but the turian Admiral and Praetor, Invectus – the monkey lover – is headed to the Citadel even as we speak. The SIU agents believe they will call for a strike against the Hegemony." He paused. "Whatever Racek was up to, he crippled the humans. He almost destroyed their primary eezo mine, and somehow disabled their last full fleet with an EMP device of some kind."

Bairak gave a sardonic, bitter smile, revealing black fangs. "Normally I would be delighted. Right now, I am not so. And given your expression, I doubt that is all the bad news."

A sigh followed his words. "No, Mighty One. Along with the damage to our dreadnoughts, another fifteen heavy cruisers are reporting software errors that have compromised their fuel, engine, and torpedo settings, and six more … are not answering hails."

The Hegemon turned to face him. "How many ships do we have to defend ourselves with then? Do not count the Imperial Fleet."

Vutank grimaced. "Sixty five frigates, nineteen destroyers, several dozen heavy raiders, thirty three light cruisers and six line cruisers. Only four heavy cruisers are fully functional, although the captains of a few of the heavy cruisers experiencing problems will try to bring their ships back online as soon as possible." He paused. "None of those ships are anywhere near – most are on the border with the human Alliance or the Hierarchy. And while they are answering hails, more than one squadron captain informed me that they were unsure all of their ships would follow orders."

The Hegemon carefully ran his hands along the long queue of hair at the back of his skull. The insidiousness of the plan was obvious now.

Racek was clearly the Emperor's pawn, and he'd crippled the Hegemony at just the right time. With the monkeys unable to react, the turians would no doubt invade – and they'd come straight at Khar'shan, to kill him. With no defenses and his fleets scattered and broken, the turians would meet little resistance – and after they'd killed the Hegemon and his caste, he was sure the Emperor would make peace, offering them up the edges of the Hegemony that he'd never cared for in the first place.

But that knife could slice both ways. The turians were far more likely to believe that the Emperor was behind this entire mess if he could play his cards right – show them how his forces, not the Emperor's, had been crippled, perhaps even offer an apology.

The Hegemon merely faced his aide. "Understood. Have my slaves prepare my formal regalia … and have the comms techs set up an encrypted comms link to the Citadel, using only naval comms buoys WE physically control. The Emperor must not learn of this communication."

Vutank stiffened. "Is that .. wise?"

The Hegemon glared. "What other choice do we have, fool? Do you think the turians will content themselves with reparations when that fool Racek incinerated their hatcheries? This is a plot of the Emperor to rid himself of the Hegemon and our rightful rule...but his arrogance and cruelty will work against him this once."

The Hegemon let a faint smile ease his features. "And pride will not stop the turians from smashing our world to a burning ruin – instead of the Emperor handing me over to the Council, I intend to suggest this entire debacle was his doing – as I suspect it was – and imply if the turians wish to go in and 'chastise' him I'm not going to try and stop them."

Vutank looked appalled. "But that's treason!"

Bairak shook his head. "No, it is survival. I'm not sure what madness has infected the Imperials, but I have no intention of letting it destroy the entire Hegemony. If that means swallowing our pride and living or defying the entire galaxy to protect a ruler who has gone mad...I will choose the latter." He gestured. "Send the message. Now."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Balak sat in the heavily reinforced chamber, meditating.

Faintly glowing cabling encircled his arms and legs, wrapped around the orange jumpsuit he'd found himself in after awakening in captivity. Pulse suppression devices, wrecking his ability to draw upon the Potence – even if he had a bio-amp, which he did not'. Not that he hadn't tried, but reaching his power was like grabbing for a high shelf just out of reach. He could feel it, but not use it.

He'd not expected to survive to be captured.

Racek, for all his other flaws, had been brutally honest about what awaited them if they were taken alive. Dead, it would be impossible for anyone to prove they really hadn't acted on the direct orders of the Emperor. Alive, the issue could be framed as terrorism, and the likelihood of things happening as Racek wished decreased immensely. Balak hadn't even bothered thinking about Shepard trying to take him alive, given her background on Torfan.

Then again, it clearly hadn't been her choice. The fact that he was a captive wasn't a good omen for the plan. He'd figured, as badly as he'd been wounded, they'd have let him die.

Typical for monkeys, the fact that they bothered to heal his wounds and stabilize him prior to executing him left him with a smile. His wounds had been major, but the human doctors had done their best to patch him up. He was still weak and many of his wounds ached with faint pain, but as soon as they were sure he wouldn't die, they'd locked him up in this fancy cage.

Of course, he didn't figure he'd be alive for long. When he'd first awoken it was in some sort of hospital, with six guards standing around, holding drawn heavy rifles. They'd removed his omni-tool, of course, but he'd picked up enough from the tone of the human guards as they eyed him with hatred and talked among themselves. They'd eventually interrogate him, then probably execute him.

Still, he knew the humans would want to blame this mess on the Hegemony as a whole, and were unlikely to listen to stories about the Dark Gods. Perhaps Shepard would, but if Aria was right the Council was suppressing the whole Reaper thing anyway, and he'd probably end up shot in the head and dumped somewhere.

There was little he could do about it, so he meditated, merely waiting for said interrogators to arrive. As he let his mind wander the Sixfold Paths of Preparation, the heavily reinforced doors on the far side of the room opened, and a trio of figures entered the room. All three wore the black coats, red belts and funny hats of the human version of the Imperial Guard – Commissars, he thought they were called.

The first one, a human male with black head fur and squinty eyes, was too skinny to make much of an impression. The second one was a darker-skinned human female, curvy and built like a pleasure slave. The one in the middle, however, was a very young asari – she couldn't have been more than fifty, with wide gaps in her crest still, and the deep purple of an asari who'd never been on Thessia in her life.

Despite the comforting touch of the female next to her, Balak had seen enough asari to see this one was scared and trying to hide it. His respect for the humans rose fractionally – they were ruthless enough to coerce an asari child into acting as a interrogator, a bit of ruthless efficiency he could only imagine Racek laughing at. He did nothing as the male walked over and clipped some kind of translucent bracelet onto his arm.

"Can you understand me, batarian?"

Balak nodded. "I can."

The man glanced at the two females before continuing to speak. "My name is Commissar Jiong. You have been captured attempting to destroy a garden world of the Systems Alliance, a high crime under both our laws and that of the Citadel. We are going to find out why."

Balak gave him an amused smile. "With the little asari girl there? I really wouldn't try that, human. You won't like the results."

Jiong's eyes narrowed further. Balak wondered if the man's eye shape was natural or something done to him to make him look more intimidating to humans – to a batarian he looked like he was lost and looking for something.

The man's voice, however, was suitably hard. "You seem to think you can still make threats. You are going to cooperate with us. The only input you have is how much of you we have to dissolve in acid an inch at a time before you break."

Balak sighed. "The process of making me into what I am destroyed most of my body's capacity for pain, human. And your pitiful insults don't register with someone who's lived in the hell of the Hegemony. Try harder."

Balak didn't bother warning him of anything else, and the man merely nodded to the female human, who was quietly speaking to the asari girl while rubbing the small of her back.

Wasn't that some kind of sexual thing for asari? Balak couldn't remember. How exactly the humans had coerced some girl-child asari into their ranks in the first place? Besotting her with some trampish human sidekick? People accused batarians of being immoral, but his people didn't even have a word for such or claimed any kind of standards. Humans, on the other hand, were clearly hypocrites.

He just wanted this to be over with so he could stop having to restrain the laughter he could feel bubbling up even now. He put on a bored expression as the asari stepped forward, hand outstretched, and her eyes went black. She touched his forehead and he felt her trying to break into his memories.

Balak merely waited, and a second later the asari girl gave a convulsive shudder and a gasping scream, staggering back with tears streaming from her eyes, twitching and flailing. The woman rushed over to her, shouting some kind of name, and Jiong whirled to face Balak, one hand going to the small flamer at his waist. "What did you do to her?"

Balak burst out laughing. "Ignorant fool, I warned you that you wouldn't like the results."

He wondered if the little asari girl could survive – clearly, the memory she'd breached had been the injection of the Emperor's Glory into his body, a trial that drove more than half the batarians who underwent it insane. It was the ultimate defense of the batarian biotic program against snooping asari trying to figure out any details on how the batarians created their biotics.

Jiong asked the female human questions, who had gathered the little asari up in her arms and was departing, A moment later he followed, the door shutting with a heavy bang. There was shouting from beyond the doors, and what sounded like cursing.

Balak let his amusement fade. Idiots.

He wasn't sure why exactly the humans hadn't just killed him, but he could make guesses – they wanted him to blame the Hegemony for his acts and needed a confession of some kind to do so. If he'd been making the choices for the monkeys, he'd have found some low-caste batarian outcast, tinted his skin white, slapped some fake hair on the back of his head and called him a 'high caste member of the conspiracy'. Given the proper script to read, it would have worked well enough. By the time anyone figured out it was a fake, Khar'shan would be in ruins.

Then again, perhaps the humans were thinking of something else. He mused quietly, thinking of options.

The doors opened again, more slowly this time, and a heavyset human male walked in, dressed in a more elaborate uniform like the Commissars before. Bigger than most humans, his form was obviously heavily muscled, his face rough and cruel looking. A thick cigar was in his teeth as he shut the door behind him.

The man gave him a long, measuring look, puffing on the cigar, and Balak grimaced. His sensitive sense of smell picked up the scent of the thing, giving the air a thick, cloying texture.

The man smiled at him. "My name is Commissar-Colonel Chisholm. I'm here to figure out what to do with you."

Balak tilted his head to the right. "Is that so?"

The human nodded. "You are in some pretty deep shit, Balak. Your boss got his ass shot off, your plan didn't work the way you thought, you had your own ass beaten by a woman, and now you are the guest of the Commissariat. I'm sure you think if you play it tough we'll just shoot you, but if that's the case, you're stupid. We've never captured a live Glorious batarian before, and we are gonna love figuring out just how in shit you work."

Balak had not considered this thought, and he spat a curse. "So you can replicate it for yourself, monkey?"

The man, surprisingly, nodded. "Most likely. We're assholes like that sometimes. Long story short, you are in for a good few months of excruciating pain and suffering as we snip pieces of you off and run various tests, before we see if we can't come up with something to nullify the rest of your powers."

Balak narrowed his eyes, but kept his mouth shut. He doubted anything he said would be taken at face value, and at this point, attempting to convince the humans of anything was likely a waste of time.

As he sat, Chisholm pulled out something from a cloth pouch at his waist, and smiled. "But first, we have a few questions for you. This is what we call a verifier. We've done a lot of field testing on captured batarians, and we're about ninety percent sure we can tell truth from lies when we hook this thing up." He unwrapped a set of metallic squares, connected with thin leads to a device of some kind, and placed them on the skin of Balak's arm.

Balak kept his expression neutral. There wasn't much chance of misleading this conversation to support the plan if he wasn't able to lie about it, but perhaps the device could be defeated by telling the truth as he saw it.

Chisholm puffed on the cigar again. "Only a couple of questions, really. Right now, the only unclear thing is who was calling the shots. Shepard says it was most likely the Hegemon, something about the Emperor dabbling in things he shouldn't be. But the few other Fist soldiers we've captured and the few records we've picked up from the wreckage of your ships would seem to be pointing fingers at the Emperor himself, some kinda plot to unseat the Hegemon."

He gestured to the verifier. "Normally, we'd just use this on your boys and see what they all came up with, but the problem is most of your forces seem to be ignorant of who was calling the shots. We could always try cross-examining bits of information we get from them, see if we can piece it together through old fashioned detective work...but getting a clear answer from someone like you is easier."

Balak sneered. "Is this an interrogation or a course in intelligence analysis, monkey?"

Chisholm shrugged. "I'd hate to be stuck in a lab somewhere, alive, while they cut me up to figure out how I worked. If you cooperate and say what we want you to, we'll put a bullet in your head before we start the cutting. That's as kindly an offer as you'll get from us, trust me – and I'm only making it because I really don't feel like leaving you alive after you scrambled little Siri's brains. But before we get there, I really do want to know what the fuck started this. You may not know the why's and how's, but I'm guessing you know the who's."

Balak considered for a long moment. The plan was probably ruined now. With everyone dead, and evidence mostly destroyed, pointing the finger at the Emperor would produce something close to the intended results. And if the 'verifier' detected what he said as a lie, Chisholm would take that to mean the Hegemon was behind it.

The humans were unlikely to have the strength of will or stomach for casualties that an assault on Khar'shan would result in. They would want easy victories and a buffer of territory to have breathing room. Blaming the Hegemon for the raids would let them continue to nibble away at the borders of Hegemony territory.

Balak finally glanced up at the human. "It seems to me you would want me to claim the Hegemon was behind our acts, given how it benefits your people, regardless of if that is true or not."

Chisholm met his gaze. "What I want, batarian, is the truth. Unlike far too many other people in positions to make decisions, letting myself make stupid calls due to hate usually ends up badly. Something isn't fitting together about this entire mess, and I don't for a minute think the Hegemon is stupid enough to blow up his own fleet and bomb the turians – or come after us – and think he could get away with it."

He folded his arms, cigar stuck in his mouth. "But if the Emperor pulled the trigger, it seems pretty fucking stupid to have even a single stitch of evidence saying that."

Balak grimaced. "And if neither of them was behind this? If this was simply rebellion?"

Chisholm unfolded his arms, pulling his cigar from his mouth. "Then I'm afraid we'll just shoot you and digitally fake you saying that this entire plan was the design of the Hegemon to ruin the Alliance."

Balak gave a smile. "In that case, the only answer I can give you is simple: The Emperor is the one who is the cause of this entire episode. It is due to his acts that we did this. While I will not say the Hegemon does not share the blame, I received no orders from the Hegemon in this action."

Chisholm examined the verifier closely, then removed it. "Well, fuck. That's the answer I didn't want."

Balak gave him a thin smile. "We never get what we want in life, it seems."

Pulling out a heavy pistol, Chisholm nodded. "True enough. The boffins say they need your brains intact to figure out your stuff, but I figure a heart-shot should be a pretty much instant kill. Last words?"

Balak tilted his head to the left. "I – " He cut off as the Commissar's omni-tool gave an alert sound, and Chisholm frowned, tapping it. "Chisholm."

A heavy, hard voice sounded. "Commissar, we have disturbing information. Siri has recovered enough to tell us she saw something in the prisoner's head we need to look at further. We're sending a pair of AIS interrogators – we think this may be related to Operation Grim Harvest. Secure the prisoner."

Chisholm nodded. "Understood, Commandant. Chisholm out." He holstered the heavy pistol, giving a grim smile. "Saved by the bell, looks like. I'll see you around." He turned to leave, and Balak watched him leave.

With a resigned sigh, the batarian returned to his meditation. Maybe if the asari girl had seen some of what he'd seen, his words would be taken seriously. If not, there was little he could do about it now.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Tevos often wished she had simply stayed on Thessia and continued running her modest advisory service instead of taking Matriarch Seva's offer to become the asari Councilor. She'd grown wealthy and gained power and influence for herself and her Family, and found love.

She'd seen truly wonderful things, and was able to close her days knowing that she was the voice of reason of the Council. For a fourth-borne daughter of one of the most minor of the Houses of the Thirty, that was no small accomplishment. She was influential, and if she played her cards right, she'd be invited into House T'Armal, thanks to Lidanya's careful maneuvering. The fact that she'd found a good, happy relationship with Lidanya was almost too much to believe, but it was certainly a nice bonus.

She also liked the fact that she wasn't even that old and yet was treated with the deference due a matriarch by most asari. Save for certain irritating C-sec officers, but you couldn't have every morning sea be glassy smooth, after all.

None of that made up for the truly idiotic headaches she had to deal with on a daily basis.

The economy was faltering, sources of eezo were becoming more and more scarce, piracy was up over five hundred percent in the past three years. The Clans were getting uppity, the clanless were restless and more of them bolted to the Alliance every day, and Aria was making noises about expanding her terror network and empire, The salarians were doing something shifty the best Nightwind operatives couldn't figure out, and the turians were not being stupid and blind any more.

Giant robot death machines lurked in dark space, and no one knew when they'd arrive to kill everyone, while the geth were gathering strength and Athame only knew what game the Broker was playing at. The volus were screaming about not being on the Council, the elcor wanted a Spectre, of all things, and the hanar were being stubborn about the most recent Prothean finds.

And now, she had an angry turian Praetor on the supplicant's pier, stalking about in a rage and doing everything but foaming at the mouth. She didn't think the general had used more than a dozen actual non-curse words in his six minute tirade up to this point, and as he finished she sourly noted both Udina and Sparatus looked amused. By the time Invectus got done describing exactly how he planned to personally tear off the Batarian Emperor's jaw and disembowel him from the inside out – something she was pretty sure wasn't actually possible – she lost all patience.

She took a sharp breath and focused her will, staring at the turian. "General Invectus. I do understand your frustration and outrage over this revolting incident. You are not the only injured party – the humans have also been viciously attacked. We are of course outraged ourselves by the loss of life, the sickening murder of tiny babies, and worst of all, the insanity that would drive anyone to attempt to destroy a garden world."

Invectus snarled. "Words! Words will not solve this insult! We demand action!"

Udina gave a dry chuckle. "And you came _here_ expecting to find it?"

Tevos gave the human a scathing look, but managed to retain her even tone. "We understand, as I said, your frustration. But the information we are receiving from the Hegemon is that these acts were done by some kind of separatists – traitors to the Hegemony, possibly some form of political infighting by the Emperor that got completely out of hand. The Hegemon assures us this will not recur. We cannot allow the Hierarchy to invade and destroy the batarian government over the acts of terrorists."

Praetor General Invectus Rathaxan folded his massive arms over his chest, his black armor trimmed in the long tassels of his rank and gleaming under the lights of the media drones high overhead. His dark black plates were marked with long lines of white paint, offset by his pale beige skin, and his green eyes narrowed as he returned her stare.

His voice flanged in fury as he spoke. "You seem to be either dim or perhaps deaf, Councilor. I am not asking for permission, I'm telling you – we have had enough. These batarian animals are not worth being left alive – they do nothing but pillage, murder, and rape. That they have had the audacity to strike at our hatcheries is an insult that will not be borne. The fact that the spirits-be-raped Hegemon has the nerve to suggest this won't happen again, after his empty promises on slavery and piracy, is enough to suggest he's fucking with us."

She put her hands on her podium, leaning forward. "You cannot invade them."

Sparatus sighed. "I believe the Praetor is being unclear, my fellow Councilors. If the Primarch does not act on this, there are hastatim and other elements of turian society that will. Not to mention some turians would see a lack of action as a grievous insult and possibly refuse to follow the Hierarchy's lead. This could kick off another Unification War, cause open rebellion against the Primarch and worse, if he does not give in and allow a pacification fleet to strike at the batarians. Already there are media figures suggesting if the batarians are given a pass on this the turians should withdraw from the Citadel Accords."

Tevos felt a cool spike of fear run down her back, but she had her orders from the Council of Matriarchs. Destroying the batarian empire would simply give Aria too big an opening. "That would be unwise, Councilor. Given the events we are dealing with, such an act would surely wreck the Hierarchy in the long run."

Surprisingly, Sparatus nodded. "I am inclined to agree. I am outraged, but I am also aware that a crazed assault upon the Emperor is unlikely to cause us anything but trouble in the end. The problem is that we have no way of subduing or preventing the outlying colonies – or some admirals – from acting. The situation isn't helped by the lack of information – we don't have any information on what is going on at this time, save fragmentary pieces from the human fleet regarding their capture of one of the terrorist leaders."

Valern spoke, sighing. "All we know at the present time is what the Hegemon has said – his own fleets were also attacked by these rebels. That makes it unlikely the entire Hegemony is behind this … barbarism."

Udina spoke. "The Alliance is also extremely upset by recent events. These terrorists nearly destroyed a garden world of millions of people and our primary eezo source. Such an act would have doomed the Alliance to either starvation or economic collapse. While I certainly understand the Council's reluctance to engage in intergalactic war at this juncture, especially with the condition of the fleets and the geth threat – it seems if we do nothing, this will only happen again, no matter what the Hegemon claims."

General Invectus gave a bark of laughter. "If the Hegemon cannot control his dogs, then nothing indeed stops them from pulling this stunt again. What next, they rape a world full of asari and claim it was 'rebels'? Butcher a salarian dalatrass or two and call it 'insurgents'?" He slammed one fist into his other palm. "I am not about to allow these filthy animals to continue to defy galactic consensus. I don't give a tork-shit about their damned culture. The Hegemon says the Emperor is behind this? Fine. We either go in and hang the Emperor from his spurs or we exterminate the entire species."

Udina gave a short laugh. "Sadly, I suspect the latter is not an option, as attractive as that sounds."

Tevos shot the human another hot glare before nodding. "No, we are not committing genocide over this act. General, as I said, we understand your frustration, but we need more time to review this event and come up with a reasoned plan to prevent further actions such as this and show the Hegemony this act cannot be allowed to transpire without hard consequences."

Invectus flicked a mandible."Nonsense. We've had them under a hard embargo for sixty years and they haven't changed anything. They were supposed to be a break on Aria's power, and instead they provide her manpower, food, supplies and a market for slaves and drugs, which is just making her stronger. Let the humans and my people carve the Hegemony up. The quarians survived for three hundred years with no home-world – if the batarians are as strong as they claim they can do the same, no?"

Thin'Koris stiffened. "While I find these acts distressing, I would point out that taking extreme actions is only going to kick off a general war – one we cannot be sure Aria and the other warlords will not participate in. We could take the Hegemony – can we also take Aria, P. and the other warlords if they fight us as well? Not to mention we still have not crushed the geth." He spread his hands. "Sacrifices must be made, the turians are always telling us – this seems like time for one."

Invectus exploded into cursing, and Tevos sighed. Valern spoke again, his voice calm and quiet. "General, perhaps some perspective is in order. What exactly will the Hierarchy accept as a reasonable compromise? Genocide is out."

Invectus glared hard at the salarian, but finally gave a long growl and nodded. "Assuming you don't have the plates to back up your threats that further misconduct by the Emperor would result in punishment? The batarians are going to have to demonstrate that this kind of behavior was definitely not something they agreed to. We'll accept no invasions if they surrender the entirety of the northern Caleus Expanse to us, agree to a completely no-tolerance policy towards slavers operating in their territory, and have the Emperor kneel to the High Primarch and beg forgiveness."

There was a moment of silence before Valern's face twitched into a smile. "Well, now that we have the completely unreasonable out of the way, I have an alternative suggestion."

Tevos listened as the salarian attempted to convince the turian general to accept some kind of elevated blockade of trade routes and more sanctions, fines and other such non-military measures. She absently tapped the data-slate on her console, pulling up detailed analysis of polling data and the first cut of what the media was saying about the incident.

Not surprisingly, there was almost no support for the batarians. There were already bills being submitted to the Asari Republic urging a military response. The humans were holding war rallies, the people of Neo Berlin erupting into angry riots at the news the Alliance was not in a position to invade and punish the Hegemony. The turian media was more extreme – most of them were calling for the entirety of the turian fleets to descend upon the Hegemony and butcher every living batarian in existence. Gruesome imagery of the destroyed hatchery was displayed, tiny turian bodies scattered around in splashes of blood and furious turian females screaming in grief and agony.

The Hegemon himself was taking the extremely rare act of actually speaking with non-batarian media figures, attempting to explain that pressures caused by the current sanctions had driven 'separatist elements' into acts that Hegemony did not support and would not defend. Yet when asked how the Hegemony planned to prevent such attacks from reoccurring, his answers were vague. The general consensus was the Emperor pulled some sort of stunt that backfired, and the Hegemon was using the opportunity to distance himself from the entire mess.

That gave her an idea, and she raised her voice, cutting into some rambling discourse by Sparatus. "Councilors. General. I have a simple and effective solution. The problem is simple: we cannot afford to weaken the Hegemony at this time for a number of reasons. With a war with the geth in progress, splintering our fleets on assaulting the Hegemony will only make us weaker, and lest you all forget, the geth are capable of rebuilding faster than we can."

Sparatus frowned, but she continued. "It will do us no good to storm the Hegemony and bring the Emperor to justice if doing so costs us our fleets and security. I would suggest that we inform the Hegemony that our demand is for the arrest of the Emperor and his extradition to the Citadel to stand trial for these vile acts. Should they refuse, the Spectres would be mobilized to bring him to justice, and if he resisted, then the axe would fall."

Invectus narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

She smiled. "The alternative to such a resolution would give us no choice, We would seek to pursue and end the war with the geth as quickly as possible, then turn the full strength of all Citadel races onto the Hegemony as a whole. To prevent warlordism from taking over the area, the Hegemony's territory would be split between the humans and the quarians, with some given to the turians."

Invectus folded his arms, bowing his head for several seconds, before grunting. "When you say split – "

She sighed. "The Hegemony would be destroyed. While we will not agree to genocide, we will not allow the Hegemony to exists as a political element any longer – and the batarian fleet and military would be destroyed, the Hegemon and Emperor put to death, and most senior government and military officials tried for violations of the Citadel Code."

Udina rubbed his chin, glancing at Thin'Koris. "That seems … equitable, if delayed. It gives the Hegemony time to prepare for war, of course."

She smiled thinly. "If the reports we have are correct, the Hegemony barely has enough ships to defend itself, aside from the Imperial Fleet over Khar'shan itself. Spectres would be used to wreak havoc in the Hegemony...I suspect STG, Deathwatch and AIS assets would also be involved."

Invectus' fringe slowly settled. "If that is the decision of this Council...I will use my influence as Praetor to attempt to get the border colonies and unhappy admirals of the Hierarchy to agree, as long as this is publicly announced. While I dislike allowing the batarians even another day of freedom to act as they do, I will submit to the wishes of the Council on this, and I suspect the Primarch will as well. But mark my words : someone will pay for this. If not the Emperor, then the Hegemon, but we will have our reckoning!"

It took another twenty minutes to get final agreement and the wording, after which Tevos left the chamber and returned via aircar to her apartments in the Silver Heights section of the Presidium. She entered her private personal offices, tossing off her shawl, and touched her fingers gently against her comm panel, sending a query.

The view-screen lit up, and three asari stared back at her. Queen Matriarch Thana was flanked by the Justicar Mistress, Layana, and the High Solarch Vathan.

Thana spoke first. "I assume you are calling in regards to the batarian mess?"

Tevos nodded, demurely. "I am. The situation is semi-stable. If the Hegemon won't sell the Emperor out and our Spectres can't get to him, we've agreed to invade – after we crush the geth – and split the territory up between the humans, quarians, and turians. That won't give Aria any opening to take possession of more territory, and even she isn't ready to fight all of us yet."

Thana gave a nod. "Based on the reports we're seeing, the Hegemon is going to sell the Emperor out quickly indeed. He has even offered to give a formal apology – in person – to the turians."

Tevos frowned. "That does not sound particularly...batarian."

Next to Thana, the Justicar Mistress gave an icy smile. "Which only goes to show batarian stupidity extends only so far. The Hegemon either stands aside and lets the turians gut the Emperor, or dies. Given that the filthy animal tried to double-cross his own military warlord, would you back the Emperor if you were Hegemon?"

Tevos shook her head, and Thana inclined her own. "Still – good work in defusing a general invasion, Tevos. The only loose end at this time is finding Ylana and any Triune remains and destroying them. Tela Vasir is on her way to the Citadel now – what is the status of Shepard?"

Tevos shrugged. "From what little I've been told, she was one of the Alliance forces used to break this stupid batarian assault and was wounded capturing a Glorious batarian."

The expression on the Queen Matriarch's face was somewhere between surprise and grudging admiration. "That is … quite a feat, for a human."

Layana's cold smile widened slightly. "It is the second time the girl-child has crushed one of those silly imitations of a matriarch's power. She is formidable, for a human."

For the first time the High Solarch spoke, her voice soft. "And this is the woman you wish to enrage by going after her wife?"

Layana gave a shrug. "Not particularly. I have no intention of crossing swords with that crazy old hag Aethyta, or insulting these humans in that way. But I want the little fool too scared out of her head to ever come back into asari space and spread her mother's corrupted teachings, and if that makes me unpopular with Shepard … the Code does not often endear one to others."

Thana waved a hand. "Enough babble. Tevos, you know what to do – keep the situation calm, as you can, and keep us up to date." With that, the comm link shut off, and Tevos sat wearily upon the reclining couch in her office.

She was still thinking on how to manage the situation when the news link lit up with urgency. She glanced over at the haptic screen, read the message, and cursed.

**O-ATTWN-O**

By the time Shepard could walk around freely and get dressed again – two full days after she woke up – a media hurricane had erupted over and around Neo Berlin.

Jiong had not quite been up to his usual game, given that Susan was still badly wounded and in serious condition, but he'd done his best. He'd curtly instructed his two lancers aboard the Kazan to beat the shit out of any reporter that so much as tried getting in the hospital, then had a few quiet words with the Commissariat planetary Commandant, who provided additional security.

That meant Shepard did not have to worry about being ambushed by Mires Cole-Vandros of Westerlund News, who was camped outside the hospital with a passel of Blue Stars No More demonstrators. She vaguely wondered if every Westerlund News interviewer had some kind of exotic, hyphenated name, before turning to the door of her hospital room, as the tired figure of Pressly came in.

"Status, XO?"

Pressly gave her a nod, pulling out his trusty padd. "We're about ready, ma'am. Doctors have patched up most of our wounded, as best they can. Tali is up and around, although her cybernetic leg will need some adjustment once we have downtime on Arcturus. Vega came out of his coma...but the prognosis isn't good, there's a lot of damage and he may not be fit for duty again."

Shepard grimaced but nodded. Pressly continued. "Commissar D'Alte has regained consciousness – although she's still in and out – and will be released to the Kazan medical bay tonight but she's still shaky and in serious condition – the shots that got past her armor went through both lungs and came within an inch of clipping her aorta."

Shepard could only imagine how helpless Jiong had to feel right now, and sighed. "Alright. Make sure that move goes smoothly, and tell Jiong he's in charge of it. It's not much, but I'd be a panicked mess if Liara was in that shape."

Pressly blinked. "I wasn't aware they were...never mind." He coughed, and continued. "The Kazan has been repaired – number three engine is still malfunctioning, but the rest are fine. The surviving ships we have are ready for departure." He paused. "Assuming we have the time, we've got everything prepped for the funeral service once we reach Arcturus, ma'am."

Shepard nodded. "Contact Alliance Command – tell them we'll set out tomorrow. I think one night of letting the crew get some leave and our wounded rest will do some good." She frowned. "Haven't been watching the news, what's going on with the batarian situation?"

Pressly frowned. "It's pretty bad. That batarian you captured is saying the Emperor was behind the entire thing, and the way it's sounding the Hegemon is not going to try and defend him. The turians are talking about another suppression, like they tried to pull on us, but so far, no one knows exactly what will be going down, except it's likely to be big and ugly."

Shepard thought about that. "The Emperor is behind it? That's not what that Fist soldier on New Louisiana said." She frowned. "Is this Balak asshole still here on Neo Berlin?"

Pressly shrugged. "I can try and find out for you, ma'am. But he's locked down pretty hard in AIS and Commissar custody, they may blow me off. "

She nodded. "Make an attempt at it, please. Something about this doesn't make any damned sense, and I'm tired of shit not making sense."

The rest of the day was mostly boring, some final tests and another round on the regenerators before the doctor finished up. The hospital discharged her and Liara, albeit with the doctor giving them both several warnings about stress. Shepard herself still felt exhausted, the lingering pain of trying to match her biotic strength against Balak's leaving her nerves with a raw sensation whenever she used her biotics.

She returned to their hospital room to gather up the last of their effects. Liara herself looked tired, but more than that she looked worn out. "I am glad this is over, Sara. I am still in shock over the amount of damage a handful of these Fist soldiers did to our people." She lifted the small bag of her personal effects and checked the room a final time before standing beside Shepard.

Sara nodded, gathering up her kitbag and heading for the elevators to the hospital lobby. "That's why I was hoping it wasn't them, Liara. The Fist is like fighting other N's, really. You saw that first guy we put down – even dying, he was trying to set off his grenades to take us with him. From what Jiong told me, the Fist captain he fought was still fighting with at least three deadly wounds in him before they got lucky in taking him out."

Liara nodded. "I am sorry Captain Riley died. While I did not know her well, she seemed more well adjusted than most of your former comrades."

Shepard nodded sourly as the elevator doors opened and they got inside. "Lee was the type of person who got the job done, but she had this tendency to try and keep her men alive above her own safety." She shook her head. "I feel like an ass for worrying more about how I'm going to replace Beta Squad than the fact she's dead."

Liara shook her head gently. "Sara, I think you are more troubled by the fact that this entire episode went about as well as it could. Your superiors did not hamstring you. You had the best equipment, and we were able to save millions of lives without any morally ambiguous sacrifices. Good men and women died doing their duty – and I do not think anyone would suggest that you could have done better."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose as the elevator door opened, and they walked out. "Maybe. I'm doing my best not to focus on what went wrong – Dallas, Walker, Riley, the soldiers who died – and on what went right. I'm not stupid enough to think that people wouldn't get hurt or killed in this mess."

She walked towards the front doors, Liara following, and her expression twisted. "What upsets me, I think, is that I still don't understand why this mess happened at all. God knows how many people died stopping this shit, and it's going to be used by politicians to do some nefarious bullshit and get a lot more people killed, if I don't miss my guess."

Outside the demonstrators were still protesting, but a line of Commissar troopers kept them well away from the hospital, and a black Commissariat shuttle was waiting, two more troopers waiting beside it. She recognized one of them as Lancer Grassi, Jiong's personal trooper, and walked towards the shuttle.

Grassi bowed. "Commissar Jiong is occupied. He sends the shuttle to take you to the Kazan, Baroness."

Shepard nodded, stepping on board, Liara following. As they put their bags down and sat, the shuttle doors closed, sealing away the noise of the protests outside. Liara shook her head in faint amusement. "I do not understand what drives those people. Do they not understand that it is not humanity who is engaging in these conflicts? Or that merely recoiling from conflict does not prevent it from finding you in any event?"

Shepard sighed as the shuttle lifted off. "Blue Stars No More is a bunch of people who've lost loved ones. And as much as I hate to say it, sometimes they have a point – the Alliance has certainly thrown away a lot of lives in the past ten years on badly planned assaults, without any real benefit except to ramp up military production." She shrugged. "I don't agree with them... but it's probably hard to explain to someone that their kid or husband or wife is dead because of political bullshit or the need to send a fucking 'message'. I can't say I understand them clearly, but then again, I rarely hear anyone giving me a thumbs up for much of what I do anyway, so they can join the fucking line of people who hate my guts."

Liara nodded, glancing out the shuttle's windows at the terrain below. Neo Berlin was a rough planet in many ways, despite its abundant natural life forms and accommodating atmosphere. Storms and earthquakes were common, and the buildings were all heavily, densely packed and gathered close to the capital city.

As the shuttle began rising through the atmosphere, however, Liara smiled and pointed out the window. Beyond the thin line of BSNM protesters and media was a vast camp of other civilians, many waving the SA flag and holding up signs supportive of the SA – and a few signs saying "God Bless Shepard".

"It appears, Sara, that not everyone is quite so blind as to reality – or willing to hate your guts, as you put it."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Departing Neo Berlin took another day, just as Shepard expected. Battlegroup Chiron had survived its first real fight, but not without heavy scars.

The loss of the stealth frigate was understandable – at was an older model ship converted into something it had not been designed for. Brave Captain Hairys and his sailors had died before they knew what hit them, most likely. The rest of the fleet had been viciously battered, and none of the ships was operating with full crews or at one hundred percent capacity.

Her orders from Arcturus were fragmentary – simply report in and stand by for further instructions. The President had sent along a cursory confirmation of these orders, along with a simple note saying his niece Eliza was improving, but still in serious condition.

The trip back to Arcturus raised its own problems – some of the electrical systems were still damaged, and without Lieutenant Dallas' deft touch in Supply, no one had actually thought to requisition and sort out spare parts requests or repair authorizations while on Neo Berlin past the basics. The loss of some of the crew to battle damage or injury meant some departments were on twelve-hour, port and starboard watch sections, which tended to exhaust the crew.

Still, the trip had a few bright spots. While the news coming in from ANN was mostly dire and confusing, Shepard was glad to hear Commissar Susan had regained full consciousness and was recovering well, and Senior Chief Vega was mobile, if not fit for any sort of duty. BuPers had already sent a request for the senior chief to report to Medical upon arrival to see if he would be stipended off with a medical discharge, something the man was not looking forward to.

Shepard spent time with Lieutenant Cole as well, reassuring him that against the Fist, the performance of the marine element was about as good as it could have been, and sharing with him the fact she'd expected to lose half her ships and most of her Marines in the fight, instead of the relative handful who'd died.

By the time the battlegroup reached the Arcturus relay, more news came across comm-links. Shepard usually didn't bother paying attention to such things, but Traynor had brought it to her attention while she was sitting in her stateroom, working on condolence letters to the families of the fallen.

Shepard scowled as the smiling face of al-Jilani appeared on the haptic screen in her stateroom, standing before the Citadel Council chambers. "Once again, breaking news. Open war has broken out in the Batarian Hegemony, following claims and counter-claims by the Emperor and the Hegemon over who was responsible for the recent, vicious attacks upon the Systems Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy. Details are still coming in, but it appears the Hegemon has been taken captive by Imperial Guard forces, after a short but bloody battle at the capital world of Khar'shan."

"The Council is awaiting a clear communication to clarify the situation, but fleeing Hegemon-caste batarians who managed to escape have already transmitted violent, shocking video of a full-out assault on the orbital space station that the Hegemon ruled from. Additional reports suggest the Emperor has already executed several batarian admirals and generals, as well as a number of high-caste batarians who opposed him. According to his heralds, the entire recent attacks were an attempt by the Hegemon to frame the Emperor and depose him."

"An Imperial Emissary – the first to visit the Citadel in person since the expulsion of the Hegemony almost twenty years ago – is due to arrive shortly. If the reports we are receiving are true, the Emissary will have the Hegemon and several other high-caste batarians who were behind the attacks with him to turn over to Citadel custody. Stay tuned for more information."

Shepard clicked off, leaning back. She'd never followed up with her inquiries as to if Balak was still on Neo Berlin. Whatever he'd been involved in, and whoever was behind it, there were a lot of unanswered questions. She hadn't forgotten the strange batarian symbols found on the thralls aboard Saleon's ship, symbols Warden Kuril had said were from Imperial slavers.

If the Emperor was somehow tied up with Reapers, or had access to Reaper technology, that would be extremely bad. But if the Emperor was conspiring with Ylana, that would be worse. Shepard wasn't up on most political trends, but even she knew the main reason the batarians hadn't been killed off is the Council was scared of picking fights with powerful Traverse warlords.

She sighed, rubbing her temples. It was all shit someone smarter and higher up the food chain that her would deal with, and worrying about it now didn't get the letters written. She refocused on that, wanting to have it done before they docked in a few hours, and decided she'd talk to the President about it, assuming he had time, later.


	32. Chapter 32 : Arc V : Sorrow

**A/N:**_ Welcome to the final arc of And Then There Were None. _

_Some people have suggested my Author's Notes spoil them, so future AN's will be more brief. _

_Reviews are always welcome, positive or negative. _

* * *

**THE FIFTH ARC : KISS THE RAZOR'S EDGE**

_"I fear, most of all, the things I will inevitably leave unsaid, undone, and unattended to when I pass into the Beyond." _

_– Benezia T'Soni, 'No one raindrop blames itself for the flood'_

* * *

Shepard took a deep breath, checking her uniform once again as she walked along the corridors of Alliance Command. The number of eyes on her made her nervous, and she'd never handled scrutiny well.

The return of battlegroup Chiron to Arcturus had come on a wave of, surprisingly to Shepard, vastly positive media reaction. While the Alliance was of course suppressing most of the truth – no mentions of the crippled ships in Hackett's fleet, or of the near-death of Major Solez – they were all too willing to plaster the fact that Shepard had not only demolished two separate batarian battlegroups, but had saved New Louisiana and Neo Berlin.

Some facts were badly exaggerated – such as the concept that the batarians on New Louisiana had been Fist soldiers – but for the most part the Alliance was delighted to have a clear-cut win that required very little management of the actual facts. Shepard would have been more amused by the propaganda if the situation wasn't so dire that it was clearly needed. As a result, the media was stoking the blasted hero-worship angle even harder than they had when she'd made Spectre, or after she'd defeated Benezia.

Traynor's message filters had been literally blasted by the millions upon millions of extranet messages bombarding the system. Media outlets were baying for interviews, and Jiong had reported bribes of upwards of half a million credits for exclusives. Shepard didn't even want to think what kind of mental defective would try to _bribe _a goddamned Commissar.

As before, viewpoints were mixed. Overwhelmingly, though, the reaction to the story the Alliance was pushing was positive. Very little solid information was known on the Glorious, but everyone knew they were powerful and dangerous. Footage (shot by enterprising types who'd somehow hacked security cameras or orbital satellites) had given raw, unedited shots of the space battles at both New Louisiana and Neo Berlin, and the shot of the Kyle-class torpedo incinerating a small batarian strike group was splashed on a hundred thousand extranet sites.

There was, thankfully, no footage of the brutality that had gone down on the asteroid, but there was more than enough from New Louisiana, showing Shepard slaughtering her way through batarians and her forces crushing what certainly looked like Fist soldiers in combat. All in all, she was the hero of the hour, and those who were spinning her media image had a dozen pieces to choose from.

Shepard didn't very much like the attention – and the syrupy re-interpretation of her life as some kind of heroic struggle, fighting against all odds to save humanity, a storybook love match with a fantastical wedding, and a glorious battle against pure evil foes was enough to turn her stomach. It was, she supposed, half-ass accurate – but glossed over a lot the bad.

She sighed, heading for the lifts. Jiong would be the first to tell her not to focus on the bad. She instead tried to think about her fleet.

Pulling into Arcturus and standing down her ships had taken several hours, some of which was spent speaking with the BuShips Intendant General, who was responsible for repairs. Her destroyers would take a good week to repair, and most of her frigates would take a least several days. The Kazan's armor belts had taken a pounding, but except for minor damage to the ventral hull and the direct hit to the engines the ship was mostly undamaged and the damage would only take a few hours to fix.

While she was dealing with Alliance brass, Tali would be overseeing workers pulling and replacing the number three engine pod and other engineering repairs, while Pressly oversaw the internal repairs. Until BuPers could deliver her another supply officer, Pressly had to oversee that function as well, something he'd never really handled before.

Offloading her wounded was overseen by Doctor Sedanya, and early reports on the injured were mostly positive, except for Vega, who was still badly hurt and might not walk again. She wished that fight had gone differently, but she'd known all along taking down a Glorious batarian was going to suck and was astonished Balak had only killed one and crippled one of her team.

Shepard had planned to work with her crew on repairs, but the urgent summons to Alliance Command had derailed that idea. Leaving everything in Pressly's hands, she'd endured the crush of media long enough to get to an aircar and head into the Sphere proper, her thoughts wandering as she did so.

Shepard had reviewed the battle with Balak in her head as she had driven towards Alliance Command, and in doing so realized that she had discovered the problem with a lot of Ahern's training – using it required time to set up and space to maneuver in. If she'd had twenty minutes to set up mines and sniping angles, to dig in and get ready, she was sure she could have dropped Balak without a single wound. Unfortunately, they'd had less than three minutes to really prepare, and the storm of warpfire he'd opened the fight with would have blown up any traps or mines she set anyway.

The corridors of Alliance Command were, as usual, filled with smartly-attired young officers, rushing to and fro with datapads, and the walk to the briefing room she'd been instructed to appear in was slowed by the press of officers around her. Their eyes tracked her, and more than a few wanted to gush at her, expressing their admiration and gratitude.

Shepard was as polite as she could be, but answered each of them in the same fashion – she was just doing her duty – and the Admiralty was calling her, so she had to go.

She wished Liara was with her, but having her present probably wasn't going to go over very well with the high command. Shepard had realized over the past two months that she tended to get nervous, edgy or aggressive whenever Liara wasn't around, and wondered if that was a good sign or bad.

As she entered the tower levels of Command, she thought about her personal situation for a few minutes. A part of her knew, intellectually, that her relationship with Liara was not entirely healthy in some ways. She'd read enough psychology and human behavior books over her leave period to realize both of them had some honestly bad problems, and that Jiong's admonition that psychology worked was not mere words. Getting over her past was not something she – or anyone else – could do alone, but that didn't make it impossible. Or something she should be putting off.

The method Liara and Shepard had used to join was a way around that, in some ways. Liara had spent a little time explaining it more clearly to Shepard, trying to de-emphasize the more mystical overtones that the asari liked to throw into it. It didn't change the fact that Shepard couldn't function without Liara, or that over time the two would become less like themselves and more like each other. It was making them 'better' – but at a cost, and one that Shepard was not remotely sure she truly understood.

Shepard sighed as she reached the briefing room, finding it as empty as she expected, given she'd arrived fifteen minutes early. The longer term ramifications of her bond with Liara were something she'd not given much thought to, and the more she did the more she worried about those ramifications. Shepard had realized long ago she was a private person – an introvert, someone not given to being emotive with others even if she wanted to or knew how.

Opening up to Liara was easy because it was effortless – the bond didn't allow any secrets, or any self-delusions. It forced you not only to deal with the entirety of who your partner was, but who you were as well. And as time went on and they bonded more and more, Shepard had come to some ugly realizations about herself.

Despite her physical bravery, and despite her willingness to endure, Shepard was, if she was honest with herself, a coward. She was scared of being hurt again emotionally, of being helpless, of being mocked and dismissed by the few people she wanted approval from. She was afraid she wasn't good enough no matter what she did, or how hard she tried. And she was terrified that all of the kind words and support she received from others was nothing more than attempts at keeping her from going crazy and pulling another Tenth Street Rampage.

She knew part of that was unfair to the people around her. But Liara was looking at her life with fresh eyes, and much of what she saw and observed made Shepard rethink her own past. Shepard wasn't going to ever be a person capable of risking what little she valued for the good of others, and at the end of the day, Shepard had to face the fact she resented other people for _not _having to suffer what she went through. Resented them for being able to laugh and be normal, to not struggle to figure themselves out. And resented them most of all for not having the damage her past had inflicted on her.

That made her feel childish and stupid, mostly because it _was_ childish and stupid. She'd done what she could to remedy it. She read. She tried to watch the news, to cook, to find things she enjoyed. She had blown half a day listening to various kinds of music to try to find what made her feel 'good'. She'd let herself be silly with Liara, to simply try to not think about anything but how much better off she was, and how life was no longer an empty wasteland of pain.

No one was going to grab her by the nose and make her live – she had to do it herself, and resenting other people for being normal when she could make changes in her own life to be more of what she wanted was stupid. It was crawling back to what she used to be out of fear, and out of worry, and if she did that she'd just hurt herself – and Liara.

It wasn't easy, and Shepard supposed, as she glanced around the empty briefing room, it wasn't supposed to be easy. Another of Ahern's sayings rang through her head – nothing worthwhile you achieve is going to come with no effort.

A bigger part of her worry, though, had less to do with her own mind. Shepard's introspection had also lead her to think very hard about Liara, and she'd slowly come to the understanding that in some ways, Liara was no better. Liara had never been given a chance to truly express herself, to grow into the person she was destined to be. She was very young in asari terms, and like Shepard, tended to hide from the results of her actions.

Liara's skill and drive were not products of a passion for anything but sheer acceptance. She'd been so scarred, so battered by her early life – the cruel neglect of her family, the mocking, the whispered conversations, and worst of all the lack of any kind of true recognition by her mother of being capable of choosing her own path – that it had broken something in Liara. And Shepard had no idea how to fix it.

Shepard didn't know if Liara saw it, but the asari wasn't really capable of choosing her own path anymore. She went off and studied Protheans not to prove her mother wrong, but because she couldn't handle being a disappointment and unwanted, and so simply wanted approval from some other source that would give it. Any source.

Liara desperately wanted to be told she was wanted, that people were proud of her, that her choices were right – but too many of the choices in her life before Shepard had merely been immature and petulant pleas for attention. Worse still, Liara didn't really understand that – to her, the only reason to pursue anything was to be rewarded with someone caring about the things you did or choices you made.

Liara's failed dalliance with a clanless on the last expedition trip before Therum had turned into a mess that had hammered into Liara's head that she was worthless. Despite everything that had happened since, there was a very large part of Liara that identified herself literally as 'Shepard's bondmate' instead of her own person.

Devotion was one thing. Worship and adoration were entirely different, and the line in Liara's head towards Shepard was wavering between the two.

It had taken Shepard a bit to really understand that there was nothing – literally _nothing_ – Liara wouldn't do to please Shepard, or be with her. She'd pushed herself to agony and beyond in Ahern's training, not just because the bitter old asshole had thrown a guilt trip on Liara saying she'd get Shepard killed, but because she felt she had to prove to _Shepard_ she could do the job.

Liara was terrified that Shepard would leave her, or lose interest in her. And there wasn't a lot Shepard could do about that, because she'd realized that a very big part of her own flaws was that she liked Liara's desperate clinging. Shepard had been betrayed and cut down from behind more than once, and the idea of someone not being capable of doing that appealed to her. And Liara knew that, and was determined to do whatever it took to make _herself _incapable of betraying Shepard.

Which made Shepard feel like a piece of shit. It was fucking unfair to Liara, and it wasn't going to make their relationship move into a better place.

It wasn't something they'd talked about openly, just like they hadn't talked about Liara's focus on what they did in bed. Shepard didn't see herself as a prude, but she was well aware her tastes weren't normal, and that most of them were driven by what had been done to her in her childhood. A part of her that she was not happy to realize existed exulted in Liara's submissiveness, and the rest of her wanted to throw up. It was rapidly becoming an addiction in some ways, and Shepard was rapidly losing her desire to control what happened, because it felt so goddamned good.

But how could they have an honest, loving relationship when one of them was willing to tear apart their entire sexuality in the name of being what their partner needed? She rubbed her head, sighing, and as she did so the doors on the far wall slid open, revealing the hard features and cool eyes of Admiral Hackett.

She came to her feet, saluting, and he returned it as he sat. "At ease, Major." She sat back down, frowning as she observed the older admiral. Hackett looked tired, and there was a medical package of some kind visible just above his uniform collar.

She frowned. "Are you alright, sir?"

He folded his hands together. "Yes, Major. Just a minor shoulder wound. I just got back from what's left of my expeditionary fleet this morning on a fast frigate they sent out to pick me up. Some of the damage is easily repairable, but some of it isn't – right now, our fleet numbers are more critically depleted than ever."

He straightened his shoulders. "The good news is we have seven dreadnought keels being laid, and a hundred and nineteen cruisers and heavy cruisers in construction. In five or six months, if everything goes according to plan, we'll be nearly back up to full strength – in two years, we'll have the sixth fleet fully operational and probably be working on seventh fleet. Long term, things look good."

She nodded. "Short term, things look bad, though, right?"

He sighed and gave a grim, thin smile. "Yes, Major. Things look bad." He shook his head. "Enough of that. We're here for two reasons today. One reason is to brief you on your upcoming mission. The other reason is so we can lay out what you'll be doing once you deal with this Ylana person."

Shepard nodded and Hackett tapped his omni-tool, bringing up a haptic display hanging from the wall. "Right now intelligence is very scant. Quarian scouts operating in the Valala Clouds near the Xalax Cluster picked up what they're pretty sure is low-key geth activity. Xalax is very far away from most of the rest of the geth we've seen, plus there are asari ships in the area as well."

Hackett tapped the omni again, displaying a regional map of several nearby systems. "Two quarian strike groups of thirty ships each, along with around five thousand Migrant Fleet Marines, will be in Valala system itself." One of the systems on the map flashed. "You and Vasir's forces will sweep in from galactic south, and perform a search of these six systems. Once you find something, it's up to Vasir to determine if you need to call for backup, or if you can handle it yourself."

Shepard folded her arms. "What do we know about Vasir? And what kind of intelligence do we have on what we're headed into?"

Hackett leaned back. "Tela Vasir has been a Spectre for about two hundred and fifty years, making her the most experienced of the entire Spectre force, if not the most senior. She holds a commission in the Republic Navy as an admiral, and also has commando training. She was paired with Ahern twenty years ago when Humanity was given its first shot at Spectre status, and Ahern has nothing but praise for her."

He gave her a hard look. "However, the Republic's relationship with Vasir is … rocky. More than once she's been forced to rely on outside sponsors for funding, including the Shadow Broker and the Noveria Developmental Corporation. She may still have links with those groups. AIS has almost no deep information on her background, except that she is not on good terms with most of House Vasir – she had an altercation with them about a century back."

Shepard nodded, and Hackett continued. "As for Ylana, according to what little information we were able to get form Noveria, Ylana didn't have a large force at her command, and whatever was left probably got destroyed when your took down Virmire, or at Ilos, or on the Citadel. Ylana is a lesser priestess, according to our sources, and is a matron – not a matriarch. She's very well trained in financial affairs and is supposedly a very good data broker and hacker, not a trained soldier. C-SEC FINCIN and the ASIF have tried to pinpoint her investments and it looks like she blew a lot of money on construction equipment, particle generators, exotic materials and eezo, but we can't find much evidence of military purchases."

Shepard frowned. "Are we sure she's indoctrinated?"

Hackett shook his own head. "No. Frankly, we're not sure of much of anything, except she was definitely involved with Benezia and Saren, and that Dr. Rana Thanoptis claims she had some minor exposure to Nazara. If she's communicating with geth and in league with people like Okeer, though, we need her taken out. Capture her if you can – if not, or if Vasir makes the call that she's too risky, kill her."

Shepard had no problems with that. "Vasir is in charge of the operation?"

Hackett gave her a sour smile. "Agent Vasir is in charge of the operation's activities – she will decide when and if to engage or disengage. You are still in command of Chiron and all SA assets in the region. Politically, it would be advantageous if the two of you got along."

She arched an eyebrow. "Why? Making the asari like us?"

He cleared his throat. "Not exactly. The President plans to have you work closely with Vasir in the future. Most Spectres work in partnered teams, and now that you're a full Spectre, you are no exception."

He pulled out a padd. "Once you're done with Ylana and whatever cleanup exists, you'll get at least a week of leave, and then we'll be focusing on the geth, with you and Vasir trying to do some snooping around to find their base locations. After two or three more months of action, we think the salarian and asari fleet will be ready to make a direct strike into geth territory, supported by the quarians."

Hackett met her gaze. "That's likely to be an ugly fight, and one the Alliance won't take part in. We'll be supporting the turians in keeping a closer eye on the batarian Hegemony...or whatever they plan to call it now. You'll play a role in that as well, as per the President's orders."

He leaned back. "Once we're at a stable point in fleet strength, around the end of the year, you'll be promoted to naval captain. You'll head to Pinnacle for command training, which is six months, and then we'll upgrade Battlegroup Chiron into a reinforced battlegroup – probably two more cruisers, six more destroyers, and a dozen more frigates. After that, the President has not shared his plans for you with us."

Shepard nodded, exhaling. "Sounds like I have a lot of work in front of me, sir. Will I still be attached to Second Fleet for this?"

Hackett shrugged. "I'm not sure. The original plan was to keep you at Arcturus, but given your connection to Intei'sai, we may re-base you and your offices out of Pinnacle instead. That puts you a lot closer to the Traverse...but far away from Sol and Arcturus. For now, you answer to the President, but your battlegroup is still attached to Second Fleet."

He gave her another smile. "In any event – I'd like to congratulate you on a damn well done job dealing with that Balak character, and stopping the asteroid and attacks on our colonies. I know it probably sounds like empty praise at this point...but we needed a big win, and you came through for us on that. Losing Neo Berlin..."

He shook his head. "We've been scouting like mad to try to find more eezo sources, but one reason the asteroids were so heavily built up in terms of GTS defenses was to act as defense bases. We'll probably be moving in more heavy units and bases in the next four months to the system to secure it further."

She nodded. "Understood. I did have a few questions." She paused, thinking. "What happened to Balak?"

Hackett sighed. "The AIS and Commissariat are still in the process of interrogating him. Balak seems to be maintaining that the Emperor was behind all of this mess, but the readings they're getting from the truth verifiers are inconsistent. We know some Imperial Guard assets were taken out by Racek, as well as a nephew of the Emperor – but a lot more Fist and fleet assets were taken out, and the Hegemon was the one weakened by that."

He shrugged. "Some of what that batarian on New Louisiana told you matches up with what an asari agent of the Commissars was able to get out of Balak's head. We're not sure if the batarians stumbled across Reaper technology or something similar, but we are certain that the Emperor is in charge of it. We had a suspicion of this some time ago and sent in a deniable black-ops team to find out more, but they were all killed. The data they recovered never made it back to the Alliance."

Shepard grimaced. "If they're tied up with Reapers, that could be a problem. One of my contacts looked at the marks Garrus Vakarian found on the salarian thralls in a ship he overhauled that had indoctrinated turians on board. The marks were from the Imperial Slave Guild, according to an expert. Could Saren or Benezia have reached out to the batarians, or built some kind of base like Noveria in batarian space?"

Hackett leaned back. "It's possible, but unlikely given the batarian attitude towards turians and asari. It's more likely that they were buying slaves for experimental purposes, sadly. In any event, we don't have the fleet strength to go poking around in batarian space, and the most recent fallout on Khar'shan seems to indicate the turians are going to settle for a slice of colony worlds and the Hegemon and his family being publicly executed at turian hands."

Shepard shook her head. "I don't like this, sir. I think we can't afford to ignore something like this – it could have larger ramifications."

Hackett folded his arms. "And I'm not disagreeing with you, Major. I'll route it up the chain of command, but I doubt anyone will move on it. Perhaps you can suggest the President send you to investigate, or contact Udina about Council involvement. Right now, the Ministers and Congress are too overjoyed at the fact the batarians are pulling back from the border and surrendering claims to five colonizable and one garden world in a peace gesture."

She nodded unhappily. "My second question is a bit more delicate, sir." She took a deep breath. "Liara was doing some testing on some Reaper hull materials we found. The source of these materials was a bolt-hole her mother had set up in case things went badly for her."

Hackett steepled his fingers. "I'm not sure I like the expression on your face, Major, but go on."

Shepard nodded. "Admiral, based on Liara's analysis, that piece of Reaper hull is in excess of sixty million years old."

The color drained from the admiral's face, and he stood, stepping away from the table, hands clasping behind his back. "Dear God. Shepard..." He turned to face her, eyes narrowing. "Is she _sure_ about this? The age? It has to be mistake!"

Shepard shrugged. "She didn't do the testing herself. I was going to suggest sending it to Rear Admiral Vandefar to confirm the … date. But if it's accurate..."

Hackett nodded slowly. "Then this Reaper problem is more serious than we originally thought."

Shepard swallowed. "I did some very rough math, sir. Vigil told me on Ilos that the Reapers were basically entire races somehow … condensed and turned into those things. If they're doing this every fifty thousand years, then that means there are well over a thousand of those things."

Hackett closed his eyes. "Right now, the wreckage of Nazara is being heavily studied in several places, using remote robotics and the best scientists in the galaxy. Maybe that will give us some kind of edge. But if you're right about this, there's no way I can see us ever coming up with the ships to fight off that many Reapers, Shepard."

She sighed. "Which is why I don't know if I should hand over the hull segment to Rear Admiral Vandefar or not. We can't afford to just give up. "

Hackett thought for several seconds. "Go ahead and send it, but let her come to her own conclusions in regards to dating, Shepard. The original tests may have simply been wrong, or done incorrectly – or, given that the metal of that ship is like nothing we can explain, may require a completely different kind of testing to get an accurate result."

He squared his shoulders. "Before I was transferred to Second Fleet, I was called in to listen to some of what Vigil had to say to the Council. According to it, the Inusannon destroyed hundreds of those things – and I can only imagine the Protheans must have put up a pretty hard fight as well. Perhaps they've been at this a long time, but the scale of what we face may not be as bad as it seems, Major."

Shepard nodded. "About Vigil...do we know what happened to it?"

Hackett shook his head in disgust. "No, unfortunately. There are six Spectres looking into the incident...but whoever got in and out was a hacker better than anything ever seen. Right now, the culprit is most likely P. – or the Shadow Broker, although his people claim to not even know what Vigil was."

Shepard snorted. "I don't have any other questions except for when I meet this Vasir person, sir."

Hackett checked his omni-tool. "Not long from now, I'd think. Her cruiser is supposed to be here later on this afternoon. Go ahead and make sure you're ready for anything – I know your ships need at least a good week in dock, but from what reports I have, the Kazan will be ready for combat in a few hours."

Shepard nodded, hesitantly. "Yes sir, but without an escort that makes us a bit vulnerable, doesn't it?"

The admiral chuckled. "I see Ahern's influence already. In general terms, yes – a battle-cruiser or heavy cruiser isn't really designed for solo operations. But we've not seen any evidence that they have a massive fleet, and while we're short in most ship categories, I can scare up a handful of frigates for an escort – maybe a light carrier cruiser, depending on if BuShips cooperates with me or not."

Shepard pursed her lips. "What about the Normandy, sir?"

Hackett arched an eyebrow. "She's mostly repaired – the shipwrights are redoing internals – but she's still at the Citadel, not Arcturus. I'm aware you have a standing request for her to be transferred to your battlegroup, but we'll have to see how her refit shakedown run goes first." He glanced at his omni again, and gave her a thin smile. "Vasir should contact you once she arrives. From that point until Ylana has been confirmed dead, follow her orders within reason – this is a Spectre, not a Systems Alliance, operation."

She came to attention. "Yes, sir." She saluted, and he returned it.

"Good. Dismissed, Major. And good luck."

**O-ATTWN-O**

As it turned out, the media was getting smarter when it came to tracking down Shepard. They were waiting for her when she left Alliance Command, squarely blocking the path to the aircar parking lot, and Shepard was faintly amused to see some of them were wearing body armor.

Jiong had made it clear to her that she couldn't dodge the media forever, and in any case, unless she was going to use her biotics to clear a path, she was going to have to say something. She scowled at the mass of reporters and hovering camera drones and folded her arms, raising her voice and speaking sharply.

"I'll answer a few questions, but think carefully before you open your mouth, I'm not having a good day already."

The media, as a rule, was mostly composed of small networks of roaming reporters, who sold their take to news aggregators, dominated by the huge setups like Westerlund and ANN. Alien news groups were more variegated, but found it harder to get into Arcturus, much less the Sphere. The crowd of reporters facing her were mostly human independents, snapping pictures, but there was one turian there, a female, who Shepard pointed to first.

"You, turian – you go first."

The turian looked surprised, mandibles flickering, before squaring her shoulders and nodding. Her voice had the typical turian flanging, but was higher pitched than other turians Shepard had talked to. "Thank you, Baroness. I'm Sakail Rataxal, from Palaven Priority News. Given your role in stopping the vile batarian attacks on human space, what is your opinion on the Council's infuriating decision not to simply obliterate the batarian Hegemony?"

Shepard gave the turian female a hard look, folding her arms again. "As a rule, I tend to think decisions on that scale are just a bit above my pay grade. I'm not aware of all the information that went into making that call. I do think that now that the batarians have pulled this kind of stunt on the turians, there will be a lot less tolerance for the rampant piracy and slaving in the Traverse, which is always a good thing."

She pushed a lock of hair out of her face and continued. "But taking out the entire Hegemony is going to get a lot of people killed. A lot of soldiers, a lot of sailors, and a lot of civilians."

The reporter made a frustrated sound. "But they have to be made to pay for what they did!"

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "And my answer to that is where was the outrage when the Hegemony ran rampant over Mindoir, or Horizon, or Dirth?" Her expression darkened, and she glared hard at Rataxal. "Because what it's starting to sound like is the turians thought it was just fine to tell us for years that it was our own fault the batarians killed off our civilians and enslaved our people, but now that something bad has happened to you, now you want action instead of diplomacy like you told us to do. Sorry, no dice from me."

Shepard shook her head, pointing at a heavyset man in a business suit. "You. Question."

The man gave a low bow, his features a mix of Indian and Chinese, his accent exotic but clearly understandable. "A thousand thanks, Baroness. I am Rashi Naksatra, of the Indian Times, a Westerlund subsidiary. The recent action against the batarians has muted talk of the war against the geth, who inflicted many more wounds upon our people. The Alliance has made no comment on the action against the geth, and many feel they are hiding something – can you make a comment?"

Shepard gave a short bark of laughter. "Not really, but not because of any kind of cover-up. The truth is exactly what I've seen on the vidcasts – our fleet got hammered and needs time to repair. From what little I know, most of what is going on right now is scouting and identifying locations to strike." She smiled. "Don't worry, we have not forgotten about the geth, and when the Alliance and other Council races are ready to strike, we will."

She exhaled. "But we can't afford to rush in without being prepared – no one's been in the Veil for centuries, and we don't know how fortified the place is. Running blind into space that was charted three hundred years ago without more recent intel is only going to get our ships ambushed."

The man nodded sourly, and Shepard pointed at another male, not far from him. "You."

The man gave a bow, his features displaying his African heritage. "Thanks. Tyrone Tutama, Free Nyombe Press. First, thank you for your heroics at Neo Berlin – you saved many millions of people. But it raises a troubling point. Our Systems Alliance is so fragile, with most of humanity inside Sol and Arcturus, and most of our eezo, food, and materials coming from our scattered colonies. Do you think we should really be focusing on the geth war when our own situation is so dire? I do not mean we should stick our head in the sand, but if a single planet being destroyed could endanger the entire Alliance..."

Shepard raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. "That's a hard question, Mr. Tutama. And the blunt answer is that I don't know we can afford not to. I am hardly privy to what plans the Alliance government is making towards long-term development – hell, I can't even tell you what they have planned in the short term. I'm just a soldier."

She smiled. "I will say that most of the people in charge are very aware of the problem. And the very nature of our fragility, as you put it, is why we need to deal with the geth now, and not when they recover and become a big problem again."

She glanced at the man next to Tutama, who was looking agitated. "You."

The man gave her a sketched bow. "Baroness. Frank Dafara, Traverse News, Westerlund subsidiary. Don't you think that the geth should be the problem of the Council to handle?"

Shepard gave him a grin. "I do. Unfortunately, we're now on the Council, so we are part of the solution."

The man scowled. "But the asari, turians and salarians have bigger fleets and more robust economies – why not let them deal with the problem? Or the quarians, since they made the geth."

Shepard shrugged. "From what I've heard, the turians and asari are going to be taking the lead in the actual first-strike invasions that will happen after scouting is completed. But to be blunt again, I don't know who will be doing what. A lot of our fleet strength was tied down on the batarian border to stop them from acting up – with at least some of that power freed up, we would probably be able to contribute more to any anti-geth assault."

Dafara scowled even more. "So human lives get spent fixing a problem not of our creation yet again?"

Shepard folded her arms. "You can't have it both ways, Mr. Dafara. Either humanity is on the Council and gets the benefits but has to participate, or we're not and we're at the whim of the Council – and get screwed. I know the Blue Stars No More people say we shouldn't get involved, but if we listened to them we would have not been able to stop the batarians from blowing up Neo Berlin. I'd rather stop the geth threat now and not have to worry about it, rather than withhold human help and give the geth that much more time to rebuild."

Shepard glanced over the crowd, pointing at another reporter, this one a striking human female with long red hair that matched her wrap-around bodysuit. "You., in the red.."

The lady gave a more correct bow, blue eyes meeting Shepard's own. "Thank you, milady. I am Chelsa Sonaro, with Free Humanity News. The question most people want to ask but seem to be too scared to do so is this: given your background and your current … liaison with an asari, do you think you're really a good representative of humanity? Shouldn't someone more devoted to human interests be our Spectre?"

The reporters nearest to her edged away, and the two asari in the crowd shot the woman hard looks. The turian reporter merely spat. Shepard looked at Sonaro a long moment before her face twisted into a narrow smile. "I don't know. As a Spectre, I don't see myself as a 'representative of humanity' so much as an elite soldier."

The woman spoke, her voice cloying."Just because you don't see yourself in that role doesn't mean you aren't one. How can you be impartial if you are married to an alien? Terra Firma, in particular, has pointed out that your elevation to the nobility – "

Shepard raised her hand, cutting her off. "Is something the President, His Majesty, decided on. If you're telling me you think he made the wrong choice, that's on you. You seem to be saying that because I have an asari wife that I'm not fit to do my job."

She leaned forward. "The problem with Terra Firma and everyone who thinks like them is the same reason I just called out Rataxal – if you only focus on your own little interests and say screw everyone else, don't act surprised when no one wants to help you when you get in trouble. We didn't get on the Council by focusing on 'human interests'. We got on the Council because we focused on the interests of everyone."

Sonaro gave a thin smile. "And yet there are millions of voters who think otherwise. Don't their opinions matter?"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Honestly, no. If people are going to cling to outdated and stupid beliefs that are likely to get us in trouble, then I'm not going to bother to listen to their input. If some people don't like I married an asari, I don't really care. My life is mine to decide on, not theirs."

She let her weight fall onto one leg, folding her arms again. "And frankly, Ms. Sonaro, the entire idea is stupid. A Spectre's job is about stopping galactic threats – not politics. I'm not here to be the poster-girl for the Alliance. And if that's what people's impression of me is, then they didn't listen very well to my interview with Emily Wong."

She turned away, pointing to one of the two asari reporters on the fringe of the crowd. "You – what is your question? Make it good, it's the last one I'm answering."

The asari was dressed a touch racily for human tastes – a tight fitting dark blue bodysuit with a very low neckline, and a wide belt of silky cloth tied around her waist and trailing to her knees. Her skin was a light purple and she had the eyebrow-markings of asari who tended to stay in human space.

"Thank you for your attention, Lady Sara. I am Tethisa, daughter of Ralyns, with Thessia Intercommunication. There has been a great deal of speculation over why Lady Liara – " the asari spoke the name with a slight hint of distaste – " chose to disengage from her role with House T'Soni and instead become a human citizen. Many have suggested it was to evade answering questions about her role in the Benezia Incident. Could you speak to this?"

Shepard gave a thin, cold smile, and the temperature of her gaze dropped to pure ice. The asari swallowed, as Shepard took a few steps forward before speaking in a low, calm voice. "I would like to say what I really feel, but I'm sure I'd get in trouble for that, so I'll say this instead. Liara made the choices she did to do what was best for her House, and to support me. I'm fully aware there's a segment of asari society who thinks she should somehow be at fault for the crimes of her mother."

Shepard took another few steps forward, until she was towering over the asari, who was now trembling. A note of quiet, ugly fury had entered Shepard's voice, her eyes narrowed to dagger-throwing slits of hate. "But if anyone ever suggests, even remotely, that my wife was somehow involved in any way with the shit Benezia and Saren were up to, except to help _kill _both of them, they are going to get to see what happens when I get angry. And if the Council of Matriarchs or the Justicar Order has a problem with that, they can address it with me."

Shepard took a deep breath, then glanced around. "No more questions. I have a meeting to be at." She pushed past the reporter, roughly enough to send the asari stumbling, and stalked towards the parking lot, the reporters parting in front of her hard glare.

By the time she got in the aircar and was headed to the docks, she had started to cool down. She should have just gone right back into Alliance Command, commed Jiong, and had him send an aircar to pick her up, but it would have looked as if she was ducking the media.

Most of the questions had pissed her off, but Shepard could see why they were being asked. People were scared, and they wanted reassurance. They wanted to hear that the problems were being handled...but they didn't want to have humans get involved. Short-sighted, stupid civilians.

She turned towards the Sphere entrances, heading for the docking connection tubes, hoping this meeting with Vasir went well.

**O-ATTWN-O**

As it turned out, Vasir was late. Which was good, since it gave Shepard time to swing by Aethyta's apartment to pick up Liara.

The ship Vasir arrived on, the _Stormwind's Spirit__, _was a strike cruiser. It was not a design the asari continued to use, having been discontinued almost two hundred years prior, replaced by their current storm cruiser line.

In their heyday, strike cruisers were used mostly to insert commando teams and other powerful operatives into a battle, using high-risk boarding actions to take out command ships. Strong engines, tough shielding and lots of armor backed up the triple heavy mass accelerators center-line to the ship's curved shape. However, in the modern era, the storm cruiser filled that role and more, and most of the asari strike cruisers remaining were badly-retrofitted assault conversions serving in the fleets of Aria or the quarians.

Vasir's ship was no relic, clearly having been refitted multiple times with modern technology. Shepard noted sourly the thing was bigger and more heavily armed than the Kazan, although it lacked modern missile technology and relied on the older, less powerful mass-effect disruption torpedoes rather than M/AM torpedoes.

As the ship docked and the fueling and supply gantry swung out to make connections, Shepard checked her uniform again, and Liara gave her a gentle smile.

"You are nervous?"

Shepard shrugged. "No, just not sure if this asari is going to be some kind of bitch to you or not. I have to work with her for some time, it sounds like, and if she starts acting like that fucking Thana T'Armal, or that bitch of a reporter earlier today..."

Liara's smile widened for a moment. "There is little fear of that happening, I think. According to my aithntar, Tela Vasir was her favorite niece, who has little love for the main family. She is very skilled and dangerous – my aithntar and my mother both taught her, as it happens – but I do not think she will treat me poorly."

The smile slipped a bit. "I hope."

Shepard squeezed Liara's hand. "Hey. Don't worry about it. If she does, she'll regret it."

Liara opened her mouth to say something, but after a long moment merely nodded instead. Shepard gave a slight huff of satisfaction and glanced back at the ship, which was now deploying some kind of docking walkway.

The asari who stepped through the hatch first was striking. Her armor drew the eye first – a thin bodysuit of deep black, with very thin, form-fitting plates of armor that emphasized her form rather than hid it. Each plate was surmounted with two or three omni-projectors, which generated thin, overlapping omni-armor fields of deep glowing blue, rather than the human style orange or yellow. Her right shoulder had a heavy, armored pauldron strapped to the rest of the armor, a Spectre cape dangling from it. A wide black leather belt studded with grenades supported a low-slung holster with some kind of heavy shotgun and a pistol.

Across her back was a warp blade of some kind, in the shape of a crescent moon but with a cross bar connecting the ends, wrapped in black leather. The edge of the blade was serrated in stylized waves.

The asari's face was remarkable only for the cold eyes that looked out. Her facial structure was similar to that of Aethyta in some ways – a blunt nose, flatter cheeks, and a strong jaw – and her facial markings were bright white, bold against her blue skin. A thin tracery of fine scars – unusual to see on any asari – marred her jawline.

The asari walked towards Shepard and Liara, her movements straightforward and shorn of the usual slinking sashay most asari liked to use. Shepard wasn't sure if she liked that or was disappointed then smirked to herself and stepped forward. "Spectre Vasir?"

The asari gave a nod, a cool smile crossing her features. "That's me. Tela Vasir, senior agent. You are obviously Shepard...and this must be cousin Liara."

Liara smiled uncertainly. "Hello. My aithntar sends greetings. I have little courtesy to offer dockside, but we could retire for chathesi tea if you like."

Tela laughed quietly. It was, like everything about her, a somewhat cool laugh, but not cruel or mocking. "Aethyta too busy drinking or shagging to come out here to greet me herself? Pft. _Shocking_. And I'll pass on the tea – I'd fuck the ceremony up anyway, I'm sure."

Liara gave a rueful smile. "No more than I would, I fear."

Tela turned to face Shepard. "Alright, now that our alien greeting stuff is out of the way, you're probably impatient to get started."

Shepard shrugged. "I have an office we can go to, if you like..."

Tela shook her head. "No thanks. I need a drink before business."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Rather than deal with whatever media might track them down at a bar and start what was likely to be a biotic fueled beat-down, Shepard decided to simply take Tela to Aethyta's apartment. The matriarch was in the process of making some kind of meal when they arrived, only to break into a smile as Tela strode forward and lifted Aethyta from her feet in a hug.

"Auntie Eth!"

Aethyta chuckled, giving Tela a kiss on the cheek before being set back down. "Damn, kiddo, you're looking pretty good. Come by just to catch up with an old bag?"

Vasir snorted, jerking her thumb at Shepard. "After being attacked by the media, she decided it would be safer for me to get a drink here than some human bar. I didn't object, I get tired of human males trying their pickup lines on me."

Aethyta gestured to the small minibar on one wall. "Help yourself. Is this some kind of super secret discussion that I don't need to hear? I can go shopping or something."

Tela walked over to the shelf of drinks, picking up a bottle of Thessian vaporwine. "Not really. It's a Goddess-damned mess, no two moons about it. But it's hardly secret or anything, Auntie. Besides, you know more about Ylana than I do."

Shepard sat down on the couch next to Liara, and Aethyta sighed. "Ylana was a good kid. Then again, so was Shiala and most of the girls mixed up in this mess. If that black bastard of a ship drove Nezzy insane, Athame only knows what kind of fucked up it did to Ylana's head."

Tela poured a glass of the vaporwine, faint smoke rising as the complex cordial settled into the glass. "Right now, the quarians didn't give us intel much to go on, and Tevos didn't give me much more information other than 'go watch Shepard and turn Ylana into paste.' Not exactly a detailed technical briefing."

Shepard spent about twenty minutes bringing the other Spectre up to speed on the situation, including the things Garrus had found on Saleon's ship, the information Liara had found about Benezia from the data-pads, and the Okeer and batarian connection. After going over the little bit Hackett had told her earlier, Tela sighed, draining her glass.

"So, unknown force, possible geth, shaky location, and we don't exactly know if there may be batarians or plant zombies or something even worse waiting for us. Lovely." She set down her drink, sighing. "I should have just kept working with Bau."

Shepard shrugged. "How should we proceed?"

Tela frowned, tapping her omni-tool and displaying a scaled down starmap of the area. "The most logical way to handle it is simple. Go in hard and fast, hit them from orbit when we find them, and then pick over the remains." She smiled. "I can't think of anybody that can handle you AND me in a fight, not even counting cousin Liara getting in on the action."

Liara gave a smile. "I will do my best."

Tela gave her a smirk. "Don't worry, if it's your first threesome I'll be gentle."

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose as Aethyta cackled in the background. "I finally understand why Pressly was bitching about his in-laws so often now."

**O-ATTWN-O**

By the time Shepard got back to the Kazan, Pressly was awaiting her on the bridge with a status report, which was mostly good. The Kazan was fully repaired, stores had been loaded, and he'd managed to secure repair parts for their battle-suits and a replacement MAKO.

"We're still short marines, though – BuPers said it will be a week or so before we get replacements for our casualties. Commissar D'Alte is on board, although she's pretty bandaged up and pale as a ghost, and she and Jiong brought along fifteen Commissar Lancers to … fill in."

Shepard winced. From what little she knew about the Commissariat Legions, they weren't much better than the Penal Legions. Heavily trained, and some of them piloted battle-suits, but most of them didn't have good armor from what she'd seen.

Then again, given the 'improvements' they'd crammed into Jiong, she supposed the Lancers probably had some of the same. "Fine. Have Jiong and D'Alte meet me in my stateroom in twenty if she's mobile. Go ahead and transmit to the crew to report aboard by 2000. We're pulling out tonight, Admiral Hackett has a small escort force of six frigates and a light carrier-cruiser to join us and Vasir's ship."

Pressly nodded, already tapping orders into his omni. "Understood ma'am. I... have a personal request."

She arched an eyebrow. "Go on."

Pressly exhaled. "I told you I was talking to my boy over leave. He's running into some issues with his deployments messing with his marriage. If he could get deployed to a space-side command, that would even out. But despite getting his A rate almost eight months ago they're keeping him on ground duty, shuffling him around to fill holes in other units."

He folded his arms. "I'm aware it's irregular, ma'am – and possibly not quite proper – but with Senior Chief Vega out for an unknown duration, is there any chance you could requisition him to serve on the Kazan?"

Shepard suppressed a frown. "Rates and rank?"

Pressly smiled. "He's A3, with a P3 and an E5, just made chief petty officer last month. The problem is that E rate – there never seems to be enough armor pilots, it seems."

She nodded. "Is he checked out on the MAKO?"

Pressly nodded, and she shrugged. "I'll shoot off a request to BuPers, see how much static they give me. I don't know if I'll put him as a squad leader, though – we'll have to see how well he matches up against the boys and girls who survived Pinnacle."

Pressly made a gesture with his hands, his stern features becoming moreso. "That's all I ask for, ma'am. If he doesn't cut the mustard, I don't expect you to reduce the company's effective strength just to get him in."

Shepard smiled. "If he's like his father, I think he'll do fine. I'm going to review my comms from the Admiralty, when Jiong and D'Alte show up, comm me."

It took closer to thirty minutes than twenty for the two Commissars to arrive in her stateroom, Susan limping a bit and Jiong supporting her by holding her arm. The female Commissar looked drawn and pale, eyes tightened with obvious pain, but managed to sit on her own.

"You two gonna be okay?"

Jiong nodded, and Susan shrugged. "I've felt better, if that's what you are asking. But I can still fight."

Shepard frowned. "Pressly said you guys hauled a bunch of Lancers on board."

Jiong nodded a second time. "Yes, Major. It was unlikely you could or would receive any reinforcement to cover your infantry losses prior to deploying after Ylana, so I took the initiative of augmenting the security force with lancers. They are well drilled and will serve for now. Susan and I will also be deploying alongside you when you go after Ylana, to make up for any other personnel shortfalls – we can fill duty officer or squad command slots, if needed."

Shepard sighed. "Jiong, no offense, but you look like a krogan beat you, and Susan can barely _walk_ and is as pale as a ghost."

Susan shrugged. "We have our duty, ma'am. I appreciate your concern...but I'll be fine."

Shepard leaned back in her chair and eyed them both appraisingly. "I need to have a conversation with human beings here, not goddamned mindfucked robots. Can you two do that?"

Jiong gave her a tired, wry smile. "We can try, Major."

Shepard exhaled. "Alright. I know you two are here to keep an eye on me and Liara, that you answer to a pack of people who think a good answer to a riot is using flamethrowers, and that neither of you are fully in charge of what you think or do." She glared hard at Jiong. "But along the same lines, neither Liara or I have enough friends that I don't count you as mine, or Liara count Susan as hers."

Susan gave a wan smile. "That makes me happy to hear that, ma'am."

Shepard snorted. "Then believe me when I say if you two need to stay on the ship from now on when we go in hard. I won't forget you were there fighting with Benezia – and you're the only reason we wont that fight, Jiong. But I _double fucking dare_ either of you to stare me in the eye and say you can function if the other one gets killed."

Both Jiong's and Susan's faces took on pained expressions, and Jiong was the one to speak. "We are Commissars, Major – "

She leaned forward. "Fuck that! You're goddamned _people_ no matter what the fuck the Commissariat shoved in your skull! You can't say it but even I can fucking see it. Don't do this shit. Trust me, I've fucking been in that place twice, thinking Liara was dead or dying, and all you want to do is smash the fucking universe to paste."

Susan's voice was soft. "We … don't really have a choice. Our orders are to protect you and keep you a functional asset for the use of the Systems Alliance." She exhaled shakily, and seemed to be struggling to say something, before a wince of pain stopped her.

Shepard shook her head in disgust, slapping her comm panel. "Traynor!"

The voice came over the comm eagerly. "Yes ma'am!"

"Put me through to the Commissariat Command Liaison. Flag it urgent."

Traynor's acknowledgment was muted in Jiong's frown and raised voice. "Major, what are you doing?"

Shepard folded her arms. "Being difficult."

Jiong rolled his eyes. "Yes, well, you exceed at accomplishing that without trying, but I mean why are you contacting my superiors?"

Shepard smiled. "I have a funny problem, Alfred. I tend to bond closely with a few people who have proven that they aren't going to stab me in the back. I count you in that number. And her. And if you two are telling me you can't stay on the ship, and one of you gets killed, the other one is going to be useless. And I don't want you replaced by someone who probably WILL stab me in the back."

Susan gave a grimace. "Ma'am...we may end up having to stab you in the back one day."

Shepard nodded. "Yeah. I know. But I had this conversation with Jiong already – you wouldn't want to, would you?"

D'Alte glanced at Jiong sidelong before giving a tired shrug. "While I am not usually the person bitching about my cruel fate in being a Commissar...what I want or don't want is irrelevant."

Shepard's smile widened as the comm link illuminated. "Not to me."

She tapped the button, and the cruel visage of a Commandant appeared, the black peaked cap shadowing the hard jawline, the blade-like nose and narrow, cold eyes. "Commandant Verity. How may I be of assistance, Major-Commander?"

She nodded. "Commandant, I am not very familiar with Commissariat affairs. But I have a potential issue on my hands and I would like a clarification. It has to do with the Commissars I have on board."

The cold features of the Commandant twitched as he arched an eyebrow. "Indeed? If this a request to remove the Commissars assigned to you, I am afraid it will be denied."

Shepard shook her head. "Not at all. But I want the authority to tell these two idiots that they're not in any kind of shape for a fight and have to stay on the ship. We're going into combat soon, one of them is half dead and the other one is still recovering from fighting Benezia. They tell me they have orders to keep me alive, even if that means heading into combat when they are badly wounded."

The Commandant folded his arms, his leather greatcoat creaking. "Yes. You are, not to put too fine a point on it, a valuable resource for the Alliance. To lose you to a fluke of combat or treacherous action is unacceptable. Commissars can be replaced far more easily than you can."

She nodded. "And I understand that. But honestly? I need them more for political advice, for counseling, for just having someone I can talk to who isn't completely full of shit and bowing and scraping all the time. I don't want them sacrificed because they're too exhausted to fight properly and yet their damned conditioning won't let them say so."

The Commandant gave her a searching look for several seconds. Finally, the hard line of his mouth tipped upwards in what even a salarian would be hard-pressed to call a smile. "Hazred said you were … different. You are aware that a Commissar is duty-bound to not only protect you from harm, but to watch you and ensure you do not commit acts unbecoming your command? If you are given authority over them, that prevents them from doing their job."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Commandant Verity, even I can read between the lines here. The Alliance isn't a hundred percent sure it can trust me." She leaned forward. "And they're right. If I can ever fucking find a way to go after the people who've fucked things up in the Alliance, you will have to kill me to stop from bringing them to justice."

She shook her head. "But the bottom line is I don't want them replaced by some asshole who wants to score points off of me. I trust them, as stupid as that probably sounds, and I don't want them getting killed. If me going rogue is that big a concern, then the fifteen or so Lancers they brought on board can keep a damned eye on me. I just want – in situations where they aren't at 100% and we're going into an unknown situation dangerous enough to require TWO Spectres – to be able to say 'stay put' to them."

Verity said nothing for a long moment, then inclined his head. "Are your Commissars present?"

She nodded, and he spoke loudly. "Authority Seven-Four-Nine: Major-Commander Shepard. Relegated to command when and only when suspicion of unethical or invalidating actions is present."

Jiong and Susan both looked surprised, and Verity turned his gaze back to Shepard. "Is there anything else?"

She shook her head. "Thank you, Commandant."

He gave another flickering hint of a smile. "If more officers were like you, Major, there would be no need for Commissars like myself. Go with the grace of our Father."

The link died, and Shepard turned to the two Commissars with a smile on her face. "See? Now, you two are staying on the damned ship when we go and kill Ylana."

Jiong sighed, and nodded. "Commandant Verity authorized that. But only when we are severely wounded – and only as long as it looks like you aren't doing anything stupid, Major."

Shepard nodded. "When Doctor Sedanya clears you from light duty, you can tag along all you want."

Susan pouted. "That fusspot wants to keep me in a medical bed for three weeks!"

Jiong's voice was dry. "Yes, most people do not walk off being shot in the lungs and heart, Susan."

Susan stuck her tongue out at Jiong. "Sissy."

Shepard shook her head and sighed. "It's probably not a good sign when I'm the only damned sane person on the ship."


	33. Chapter 33 : Ice worlds, End moves

**A/N:**_ The only appropriate author's note here is **extended evil hysterical laughter.** _

_Reviews are always welcome, positive or negative. _

* * *

_"Conspiracies are often successful because so many discount them as being real, due to those who foolishly attribute everything to a conspiracy."  
_

_– Anita Doyle, 'Notes on Human Psychopolitical Theory'  
_

* * *

_DOWNLOADING: Data feed, prime broadcast segment 194_

_Manifest dump 42235-core alpha, unclassified_

_This is an official Systems Alliance data capture dump, replication or rebroadcast is restricted._

_Transcript begins, identifiers J: al-Jilani C: Coleman D: Daress_

_Keywords: batarian, Emperor, Imperial, war, Systems Alliance, Coleman, slavery_

BEGIN:

"Westerlund news! All the news, fit or unfit to print, 24/7!"

J: Good afternoon. I'm **Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani**, Westerlund News Network. This is an extremely special report, coming to you directly from the Citadel Tower.

J: Today we are extremely honored to interview two vastly important beings. First is Lord Jason Prescott Coleman, the Prime Minster of the Systems Alliance, High Lord of Sol, and Elder of House Coleman. Our other guest is equally extraordinary – His Imperial Grace, Tathak Daress, Mouth of the Emperor of the Batarian Hegemony.

J: Your Grace, Your Mightiness, thank you very much for agreeing to speak with us.

D: [narrows all eyes] Of course.

C: A pleasure, madame.

J: I am aware in batarian culture it is somewhat irregular to answer the questions of a female –

D: [interrupting] We are not entirely bereft of sense and logic. While I can easily admit that bothering to answer the questions of a _batarian_ female would indeed be demeaning and a waste of time, it has been made exceedingly clear that females of other races are not leaves of the same tree. Let us dispense with such verbal dancing and ask your no doubt offensive questions – I _have _watched this vidcast before.

J: [slightly coloring] My apologies, Your Mightiness. My first question is indeed to you. Given the unhappy relationship between humanity and batarians, many humans on our border are uneasy and unsure of what exactly is happening right now in batarian space. Could you please clarify the situation to us?

D: The situation is simple. The Hegemon, who is mostly responsible for the piracy and hostility encountered by your Alliance in their dealings with us, attempted to usurp total power and control by framing the Emperor as behind these vile attacks on the turians and your own people. I will not pretend we are your friends, nor will I make any apologies for the hostility with which we greeted having the Attican Traverse taken from us after the empty promises of the Council.

D: [folds arms] After all, humanity has already learned how quick the Council is to respond to … trouble.

C: All too well.

D: [nods, tilting his head to the left very slightly] However, while some outre elements of our military have done perhaps regrettable acts in order to attempt to terrify humans from settling in what we consider _our_ territory, we never engaged in outright violations of basic decency such as the terrorists under the Hegemon committed. Blowing up turian hatcheries is tantamount to suicide, and obliterating a garden world such as Neo Berlin – a rich source of eezo – would draw the entire Council upon our heads in towering wrath. That benefits the Emperor not at all – which was no doubt the Hegemon's plan.

J: But your people, in the past, committed brutal acts of invasion against our colonies. You can understand why many would lay blame on such acts upon the Emperor.

D: Which is why I am here to correct those misconceptions … and see justice done. The Emperor, holy are His footfalls, has no need for slaves, or territory. The Hegemon is the one who wanted war, because war propped up his government, allowed him the justification to subjugate the lower castes even beyond what the Pillars says of their kind, and worst of all, engage in a military build up that has starved and bankrupted our people while forcing us to undergo a ruinous embargo.

D: [smiles] The plan was apparently to infuriate the turians so much that they would attack Khar'shan, while the main batarian fleet under the Hegemon's control was conveniently 'disabled' by an EMP attack. We had evidence that the Hegemon was attempting to craft lies about the Emperor being behind this savage attack when we attacked his holdings and arrested him, and all of the members of his extended family.

J: And now what happens?

D: The Hegemon is already aboard the Citadel, being turned over formally to the Turian Hierarchy. What they do to him is none of my concern. The other Hegemon-class families are being stripped of much of their wealth and positions of influence, the money and materials going to a package of reparations paid to the Hierarchy...and to the Systems Alliance as well. We are pulling back from a number of border systems that are contested between us, and I am here meeting with your Lord Coleman to hammer out a firm peace agreement. As for the fate of the rest of batarian government...the Emperor is considering what to do next.

J: A wonderful thing to hear, Your Mightiness. Your Grace, can you speak to what the Alliance is doing in terms of reaction?

C: Of course, madame. As I've said all along, pursuing interstellar war with the batarians is merely hurting us and them, while the powerful races of the galaxy laugh themselves silly and gain more power. Certainly if it came to all out war, the Alliance and Hegemony would exhaust each other, and in the aftermath be easy pickings for domination by some other alien race.

C: [smiles] With that in mind, a reduction of hostility will allow us a reduction in military spending, moving those resources into further developing our economy, our colonies, and our internal security. Given our elevation to the Council, and the recent trade treaties conducted with the Quarians, we should be more than capable of holding our own economically in the near future.

J: And what of the calls of demands of war from some border segments of the Alliance, while the Hegemony is weak?

C: [sighs] Those are an unfortunate and ugly circumstance, one that frankly makes me wonder what the people on those outlying colonies are thinking. We are already at war with the geth, a foe that does not accept surrender and will not negotiate peace, after a horrific attack on our people. Our fleets require repair and reinforcement, our brave soldiers and sailors desperately need time to recuperate and recover. To engage in war with the batarians, as they hold their hand out in peace, would be a vile and frankly stupid act.

J: What of the turian 'rogues' who have been fighting in the fringes of batarian space?

D: If you would, Lord Coleman, I'd like to answer that. The turians who _claim_ to be operating without permission from the Primarch will be handled, we are told, by turian fleet assets. If they are shooting up slavers or … ahem, independent operators, then there is little we are inclined to do.

D: [leans back] If it goes beyond that, well...the Imperial Fleet is prepared to act.

J: There has been a number of recent posts on the extranet by some dissident batarians, claiming the Hegemon had nothing to do with this attack. Some of the outlying batarian worlds seem very resentful of the Emperor. Can you also speak to this?

D: Internal batarian matters are _internal_ for a reason. However, generally speaking … the high caste resents, and always will resent, bowing their head to the Emperor, much as certain groups in human history refuse to bow to the Lords of Sol. Stubborn intransigence does not equal validity, and anyone taking them seriously cannot really be seen as anything but an agent provocateur.

J: I see. Your Grace, do you have anything to add to that statement?

C: Only that it is likely there will be friction between the batarians and humans in the future, but we shouldn't let that turn into warfare again. While I am honestly not a fan of some of the actions the Emperor has taken in the past, this is no time to be starting wars, and the most recent polls taken on Earth show more than ninety percent of the population are in favor of peace.

J: Yet less than fifteen percent of the outlying colonies feel the same way, and less than half of the second stage colonies. Might this not imply that people on Earth, far away from the fighting, are simply ill informed?

C: No, not at all. More to the point, you cannot expect people who have suffered at the hands of pirates to simply agree that all is well and forgiven. I do not expect that, nor have we forgotten the outrages at Torfan, Mindoir and in other places. But as I will reluctantly admit has been proven with the turians, clinging to old hatreds doesn't benefit us in the long run.

C: [smiles] Not to be cliché, and I'm aware of the context...but I do think a disengagement of hostility at this juncture, and the Emperor expressing greater control over his people, will certainly lead towards peace in our time.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Jack Harper terminated the news feed, a sour smile crossing his features for a moment. "An apt phrase for an appeasing fool."

Next to him, Miranda Lawson gave a brisk nod. "Despite Coleman's obvious political influence and power, he does not seem to be very good at reading the political trends on the Citadel, sir."

Harper lifted his drink, an errant bead of condensation falling from it to splash on his dark gray slacks. He brushed it away in irritation, then sipped. "That is because he isn't good at it. He's a player, but the rules he's used to playing by are all human ones, not alien ones. His distrust of aliens is useful and even valuable, but his blindness to what this means in the long term is worrying for a prime minister."

He set his drink down, and picked up a fresh cigarette. Lighting it, he blew out smoke before fixing his gaze on Miranda. "Where are we on the next phase of our plans?"

The beautiful woman gave a shallow sigh, folding her arms behind her back, glancing around as she gathered her thoughts.

The room they were in was large, with heavy armaglass windows overlooking a pristine beach and gentle waves. Two walls were taken up by multi-panel haptic displays, covering financial markets and news broadcasts from a dozen sources, while a third wall was covered in a larger display with various updates flashing across a map of the galaxy.

The floor was aged teak, covered here and there with expensive rugs, and the chair the Illusive Man sat in was his usual black and silver seat. Outside the blocky room a single corridor connected the deck house to his current hideout, a palatial set of building built into the cliffside of Havestor Bay on Bekenstein. The glittering skyline of New Jerusalem could barely be made out on the horizon, tiny dots here and there the only sign of the traffic coming to and fro.

Expensive wooden decking stretched out in a perfect circle around the main building, and in the distance Matriarch Trellani sat on a deck chair, relaxing in the warm sunlight.

Miranda grimaced sourly at the sight, then refocused on the question. "It's coming along as well as can be expected, given a surplus of cash and a paucity of agents. Agent Rasa has taken up her Brooks persona and is infiltrating Alliance Command, currently posting as a lieutenant in Communications. General Petrovsky has made a few hesitant contacts in with elements of the Fist of Kyle, as some of them are very upset about the accommodation with the batarians. Kai Leng and Theo Pellham are operating independently in the outer colonies, tracking down rumors of this new Hades group."

She didn't need to consult her omnitool or a pad – her perfect memory let her recall each situation in detail. But how one said things to Jack Harper was sometimes even more important than what was said, and the next bit had to be said in the right way. "So far, we haven't had any success in reaching out to Shepard. She doesn't appear to have tried to contact you via the TTG link you left her, nor can we see any signs that she's learned anything else of what you told Kyle. However, she's been out of contact due to being on leave and now dealing with the situations presented by the batarians – we may have a better chance of trying to contact her once she returns to Arcturus."

Harper frowned. "We may need to be more direct, then. The few contacts I have left are not sure what is happening, but three times now Shepard's file has been pulled by the AIS in the past two weeks. And the man I had in the AIS got out a partial report before he ceased contact."

He inhaled on his cigarette again. "Aloxius is in regular contact with the Broker, and Shepard's name came up."

Miranda shrugged. "We may have some success in inserting someone close to her. She took some casualties on the last action she had, and both Mr. Ezno and Mr. Taylor are still Alliance soldiers in good standing, if both discharged from active duty. We could try to get one of them assigned to her ship..."

Harper shook his head, standing. "No. That's too clumsy, and in any event, I need her to come to us, not us to go to her. I may have mistimed trying to reach out to her on Arcturus. If all she feels for me is antipathy and suspicion, she won't hear me out."

Miranda shrugged. "I admit I don't see what makes her so necessary to our operations. She's a talented soldier and biotic...but hardly subtle."

Harper took a drag from his cigarette, gazing out the window, and nodded calmly. "No, she isn't. But she has a direct conduit to the President, and he has access to whatever House Windsor and House Manswell are up to. She has some kind of knowledge of the Protheans in her head. She's the one best suited to tell us more about the threat of the Reapers."

He paused. "And, of course, she's the only person with the clout and protection to be useful in derailing this disgusting NOVENSILES business."

Miranda stiffened, saying nothing, and Harper glanced over his shoulder. "That's not a commentary on _you_, Miranda."

She shrugged. "I'm a failed template, sir of that process. So in a manner of speaking, it is a commentary. I can understand why Mr. Lawson made the choices he did. But where does Shepard play a role?"

Harper stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray built into his chair, and looked up. "If things go well, she'll be the one to expose it if that has to come about. If things go poorly, she'll be the one thrown into the teeth of the opposition to cover our own tracks. Don't get me wrong: whatever knowledge she has, connections she has, any of that is still secondary to the survival and prosperity of humanity."

Miranda nodded. "But if you are right, then someone is setting her up to be … what? Disgraced? Killed?"

Harper gave her a searching look. "It doesn't matter what they're planning. Make sure it doesn't succeed. Report again when you have more clear-cut information." He turned away, picking up his drink and heading for the door leading to the beachfront.

Miranda watched as the Illusive Man walked over to Trellani, engaging in some kind of banter. She glared hatefully at the asari matriarch, then stalked out of the room, back to trying to find out how to get in touch with Shepard without tipping her hand.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The Xalax Cluster, to Shepard's admittedly untrained eye, was gloriously beautiful.

Some ninety stars glowed in fierce hues of blues and white, illuminating a giant nebula with eerie ghosting starlight in all directions. Whirls of dark gaseous matter stood out like clifftops, frozen stillness against the glittering lights beyond.

The amount of stellar radiation, hot nebula gas, and fragmented radiation waves from the mega-nova that tore apart the area some sixteen million years earlier made it a natural place for those with a criminal bent to hide. There were nine systems in the region that had planets, six more with broad belts of asteroids, and two stars boasting a gas giant with an orbital station.

The so-called Black Fleet, the corsairs and pirates of Aria's collection of warlords, was thickly traveled in these regions. More than once, the Kazan and the Stormwind's Spirit came across small groupings of these ships, blathering on about invasions into their territory.

Vasir answered the first such pack of idiots with a storm of mass slugs that actually turned out to be small anti-matter packets, blowing the ragged but still dangerous bulk of a pre-FCW turian heavy cruiser into a burning wreck. After the Kazan burned nine ships to ash and free-floating energy with a Kyle torpedo, accompanied by a jaunty transmission from Joker of an pre-Iron song called 'Get out da way', most of the Black Fleet gave the small squadron a wide berth.

Shepard sat on the bridge in her command chair, legs crossed, examining the contact plot closely as they entered the system Quth'va. After a week of fruitless searching, they'd narrowed the possible places Ylana could be hiding to this system, or the one beyond it.

Quth'va was a world inhabited by a pre-spacefaring race known as the Kintul, currently engaged in some kind of metal-age warfare and killing each other by the thousands. Most garden worlds supporting intelligent life required oversight - the Citadel usually stationed a peacekeeping operation at the system's fringes, to monitor a series of concealed sensor beacons and prevent any slavers from influencing the world – such as by slavery – or prevent wildcat mining.

As it turned out, however, the system was abysmally metal poor, with only copper and some iron being found in any concentrations. It had two gas giants, neither well suited to HE3 mining. And the natives themselves breathed concentrations of argon and hydrogen from their heavy-g, massive world – too expensive to bother with enslaving, not to mention the native bacteria were horrifically parasitic – some slavers had found that out early on, before they were literally eaten alive by boring worms.

On top of that, the system was brutally hot due to the B-class super-giant that rivaled Palaven's sun in intensity, something most pirate ships, with crappy heat control, would not be able to handle. All in all, Quth'va was a system that had nothing to offer and would get you killed trying to mess with it.

Useless to pirates. _Perfect_ for someone looking to hide.

The first four systems Shepard and Vasir had scouted had turned up nothing but scattered pirate bases. Disturbingly, these bases were gutted wrecks, accompanied by the ruined hulks of more than a few pirate ships tumbling in orbit or through the systems the bases were in. Despite carefully examinations, there wasn't much clear evidence of what took them out, except that it was recent and hit extremely hard. Several of the ships looked half-melted, or sheared cleanly in half.

Shepard wondered if Nazara had been used to clean up the system, but Vasir thought different – perhaps Ylana had experimented with some kind of weapon like the Reaper used. Only one clue was found, one of the bases had definitely been hit by geth at some point, as the distinctive pin-hole impacts of plasma darts and white cooling fluid were found in several places.

Quth'va was centrally located to all these sites, and thus the strike force was headed there. Vasir's own team of combat specialists was gearing up – not one but two war priestesses, fifteen asari commandos, and a trio of life-debt drell Remembrance monk-assassins, along with thirty or so veteran asari Republican Guard soldiers. Shepard's own force, after the losses at Neo Berlin, were reduced, but she still had five battle suits, two MAKO's, and twenty marines, along with her other AIS sniper, Jackson, and her two DACT – still miraculously alive.

Shepard was reluctant to put Tali in any more danger after Neo Berlin, and even more reluctant to put Liara in harm's way again after the savage beating and over-stressing of her biotics at Balak's hands. With both Jiong and Susan sitting the fight out, Cole still recovering from his own wounds, and no N-series marines, she decided to simply drop in the MAKO's, deploying her DACT alongside, and command her marines herself.

The system was as silent as a tomb, electronically speaking – not surprising, given the height of Kintul technology in terms of communications was semaphore stations. The three inner planets aside from the world of the Kintul themselves were each carefully scanned, and at the third one Liara looked up from her console.

"Shepard...I'm getting something strange on the fifth world. It may be electrostatic emissions from some kind of energy generation equipment. It's coming from a set of mountainous terrain in the far north, but the planet's own iron core is generating a great deal of interference. It is difficult to make out if it is natural or artificial without launching probes."

Shepard frowned. Launching probes would definitely alert whoever was down there that they had a problem. They'd approached the system as carefully as possible, slowing to avoid a big blueshift wake and coming in below the ecliptic plane, shielding their approach to the inner planets with the bulk of the sun as long as they could. Given the amount of interference from the world's core, ground based sensors might not have picked them up yet.

She tapped her comm. "Vasir. We may have something on the ice world, fifth planet. Can't tell without a probe launch. If they have GTS defenses, things may get busy."

Vasir's voice crackled across the comm. "The quarian scouts _definitely_ picked up geth transmissions from either this system or the next one. And the next one looks lousy with pirates, who can't keep their damned mouths shut. If this is the place, Shepard, no point in being coy. Get ready to go in hard and launch the probes, we'll move to high orbit."

She nodded. "Pressly, take us out of silent running." She clicked her comm panel. "All hands, set condition 3SQ. Battle stations. DACT and Charlie Squad, report to the launch bay for orbital insertion."

She clicked off as the alarms rang, and Colms was already at work at the weapons panel."Torpedoes reconfigured for atmospheric re-entry. Reduced yield on the main guns to fifty percent. Bringing up kinetic barriers now."

She gave him a nod. "Liara, launch probes when ready. Joker, be ready to evade ground fire."

The ship shuddered as the two probes lanced out, one shooting straight into the murky atmosphere, the other taking a more shallow path into an angled low orbit. Liara bit her lip as her hands moved over her controls, speaking quietly to her two assistants, before narrowing her eyes. "There are multiple energy sources, Shepard. Two near a valley entrance at the foot of a large mountain, and one within the mountain itself."

Alarms rang in Ops Alley and a tech called out. "Multiple GTS acquisition radars just kicked off, ma'am!"

Another one cursed. "Incoming fire! Missile launches, multiple!" Even as he spoke, several heavy silver streaks of light tore out of the atmosphere, two missing but the third slamming hard into the blue-glowing shields of the Stormwind's Spirit.

"Pressly! Blow chaff now. Joker, course zero nine zero, max tac full dive!" She barked orders, and the ship heeled, engines straining as it turned directly downwards, rumbling as it shifted position.

Missiles bloomed in the atmosphere below, each burning hard in their direction, and more accelerator fire came out of the cloud-swirled skies, missing the Kazan by less than a few hundred feet. Shepard turned to Colms. "Target and fire at the GTS sites."

He nodded, even as Vasir's ship was already opening fire, and kinetic blasts rained down. Joker turned the ship into a tight spiral, avoiding the slowly-climbing missiles, but another mass round slammed into the side of the ship, sending it into a wobble.

Shepard glanced at her status repeater. "Tali, damage?"

The quarian's voice was calm. "Minimal, but they shot off a stabilizer. Went right through the shields, they are using phasic-charged rounds, Shepard."

Colms cursed, and Shepard nodded, toggling comm links. "Vasir! Those shots are phasic!"

The asari's voice was amused. "Phasics don't penetrate cyclonic shielding, Shepard."

Shepard hissed. "Yeah, well we don't _have_ that!"

Vasir gave a throaty chuckle. "Well, dodge more, then. Pilotess, take us in, full descent power." The line went dead, and Shepard shook her head.

"Joker, bring us in behind the Stormwind's Spirit. If her ship can take those shots, let it."

Colms frowned. "We can't fire if we do that, Major..."

Shepard shrugged. "Too bad." She stood. "Once we reach launch altitude for our MAKO and DACT, launch – then pull out and get out of the arc of those mass cannons. I'll comm you once I'm on the ground."

She gave Liara a confident smile, and then turned to head into the elevator.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Given the system was hardly explored, there was no real name for the fifth planet of the system, but Shepard was prepared to call it 'shithole'.

The atmosphere was a mix of carbon dioxide and sulfur, well below freezing and with lovely shards of windblown ice in all directions. The atmosphere was tormented by storm cells bigger than North America and with winds over seventy miles an hour – the DACT ended up riding inside the MAKO as it tumbled, barely in control of its descent.

Above them, the Stormwind's Spirit lanced out with more fire at a series of burning and shattered hills, silencing the last GTS battery in an explosion of white light and searing flames. The mountain guarded by the low hills was immense, towering nine thousand feet above the planet's half-frozen seas, and composed of enough iron and heavy rock that orbital bombardment would take days and days to break through.

Vasir's own forces were descending in a heavy pinnace-style vehicle, one that was clearly having problems with the winds. While the MAKO triggered its mass effect core and landed smoothly if heavily on sheets of thick ice, the pinnace came down awkwardly.

The landing bent one of the landing gears and the nose of the craft cracked the icy rocks beneath it, but it was still in one piece. Shepard instructed the MAKO driver to head over towards the pinnace landing location, and the MAKO ground its way across the slippery stone terrain, sliding a bit here and there.

The back of the pinnace opened up, and a low-slung hover vehicle emerged, some kind of asari APC. The voice of Vasir crackled across the comm link. "Conditions down here are worse than I expected, and my hover transport can only accommodate half my force. Your MAKO tanks have any spare seats?"

Shepard answered. "Yes, about eight each."

They spent a few minutes letting some of Vasir's asari troopers get into the tanks, the alien females brushing off melting sulfuric slush as the sat down in the seats. The senior huntress of the group in Shepard's MAKO introduced herself as Fiyanda, and grimaced at the mess the snow had made of her armor. "This is a horrible place to set up any kind of base. Acid snow, wonderful."

Shepard grinned. "I've seen worse."

The hover vehicle and the two MAKOs trundled across the rolling landscapes, while a series of torpedoes from orbit crashed down around the mountain in the distance, along with more mass accelerator fire. Something in the distance blew up with a gout of bluish flames and a moment later the MAKO rocked with the shockwave of the blast.

She tapped her comm. "Pressly, you guys just blew the _hell_ out of something."

Pressly's voice was calm. "According to LTC T'Soni, that was some kind of power generator – maybe for surface defenses. We're still reading energy and heat signatures from within the mountain, but none from the outlying sites. Telemetry from the probes shows some geth on the ground, but most of them are destroyed now."

She exhaled. "Acknowledged. Deploy our fighters in wide area search, I don't want anything sneaking up on our ships while we're down here."

It took twenty minutes for the three vehicles to pick their way through the now blasted valley leading towards the mountain's base. Geth structures lay in burning ruins on top of both sets of flanking hills, along with more than a few dead warforms. Here and there a surviving geth attempted to engage, but the guns of the MAKO and the lancing plasma blasts of Vasir's transport ended those attempts quickly and explosively.

The base of the mountain was defaced by a number of geth buildings, seemingly fused into the very stone of the mountain itself. Most of these were battered ruins from the orbital bombardment, but Vasir put several arching plasma blasts into the wreckage to make sure before ordering her team to disembark. Shepard followed suit, drawing her Valkyrie.

The ground was a mixture of slushy ice and soot, giving way to grated steel walkways as they got closer to the entrance. Geth barricades, strangely curved and organic, were surmounted by the shattered warforms that had been destroyed by the bombardment, and it didn't take long for the force to pass through the wreckage and reach the entrance of the base itself.

A pair of white metallic doors, buckled but not broken, blocked their way, but the war priestesses – wearing thin environmental suits and face-masks – brought their biotics to bear, pulling the doors open and apart. A rush of air burst out, crystallizing as it hit the chilly outdoors, revealing a wide egress ending in what looked like a massive airlock door.

Vasir's voice was cold as she spoke across the commlink. "The inside is probably safe atmosphere, but keep your environmental suits on and sealed. We're blowing the doors – I'm not really interested in taking indoctrinated prisoners, and the more Triune die gasping for air, the less we have to worry about ambushes."

A few minutes later, after two asari applied multiple plasma charges to the door, Vasir gave a handsign and the explosive detonated. Scything shrapnel burst inwards, followed by bursts of suppressive fire from Shepard's marines and thrown warpfire from most of the asari.

Faint screams and the digital shriek of geth told Shepard they'd hit something. Vasir's forces rushed forward, firing steadily, and Shepard triggered her in-party comms.

"Let the asari take the lead. Alpha Team, focus left. Beta team, back me up. Shoot to kill, as I don't think these people are going to surrender."

The passage beyond the now-destroyed airlock door was roughly cut into the mountain, braced with spars of geth material along the walls and ceiling. It was almost thirty feet wide, and several side corridors branched off from it at regular intervals. Vasir dispatched her soldiers down the side corridors in teams of six, while Shepard kept her own people in formation aiming down the corridor.

The first four side-rooms were storage, it seemed. Pallets of eezo, bulk containers of various metals and industrial plastics, and survival equipment and rations. The next two rooms were festooned with life support equipment, O2 generators, heating and cooling exchangers and the like.

Vasir frowned at the discoloration of the walls and signs of traffic. "This place has been here for well over a year. But where are the defenders?"

Shepard shrugged, her rifle held loosely. "Maybe the bulk of them were whatever the hell those geth buildings were at the front, or on the hills? Given how many people Benezia lost in the Citadel attack, there couldn't have been that many of the fuckers left."

One of the asari soldiers, a scout-sniper, came back towards Vasir. "Mistress, we've found another airlock door ahead. Energy readings beyond it. The last remaining rooms are more storage and a large cutaway space filled with machining equipment for cutting segments of worked metal."

Vasir nodded. "Form the echelon, then have the door taken down." She glanced aside to Shepard. "Your marines should form up behind us, our battle formation doesn't adapt well to changes – or non-biotics."

Shepard had no issues with that. It meant her marines were less likely to die, after all. "That's fine." She tapped her comm. "Marines, deploy in firing ranks behind the asari and be prepared to deal with flanking attacks or anything coming from behind us."

The asari reshuffled their own ranks, the basic soldiers at the front, more senior ones in the middle, and the war priestesses, monk-assassins and Vasir at the back, before the war priestesses hurled powerful flare strikes at the doors. Both doors crumpled with the blast, one falling down entirely, the other hanging from its guiding railings.

Out of the smoke and debris of the entrance, geth warforms poured through, firing as they came. The front rank of the asari fell to one knee and fired in rapid sprays of plasma fire, the ones behind them using sniper rifles to target the larger geth units. The two priestesses and Vasir focused on generating powerful biotic barriers to block the bulk of the geth fire.

Shepard swapped her rifle for her sniper rifle, sighting in on a geth with a heavy rocket launcher and firing calmly, putting the unit down. It only took a few minutes to shoot down the remaining geth, who seemed sluggish and almost plodding in their mindless advance, rather than their usual cunning tactical actions.

Vasir's force moved forward slowly. The corridor beyond the second set of doors was much different, the stone polished and smooth, the geth supporting beams more refined looking. Cloth hangings of extremely strange fractal patterns hung between them, the shapes illogical and almost painful to look at.

The corridor ran some sixty feet before terminating in a wide circular room a good two hundred feet wide and fifty feet tall, supported by vast pillars of geth metal festooned with haptic displays. A segmented assembly line of some kind dominated the room, with the skeletal outlines of something being built in pieces at various stations. To Shepard's eye, it almost looked like a Prothean Beacon, but this one was wrong, some how – the shape was off, and it made her eyes want not to focus on it.

Small rooms festooned with sleeping pallets, pillows and rugs surrounded the periphery of the room, along with what looked like a badly maintained kitchen. Corridors headed off in several directions, and the walls were covered in madly scrawled diagrams, strange paintings done with blue and red paint, or spattered with blood.

A mere handful of asari in the white robes of the Triune were in the room, most clutching weapons and taking cover behind computer consoles or unfamiliar machinery, and at the far side of the room, standing inside the radius of a massive semi-circular plinth of computers and haptic screens was a single asari in blue and white robes, who turned to face them as they entered.

Vasir pulled out her heavy shotgun, her voice hard as she triggered her external speakers and the omni-armor she wore glowing more brightly as she sent additional power to it. "Ylana, daughter of Anora, priestess of Clan Moondance. You are accused of treason against the People and defiance of Citadel Law. Surrender or face the Beyond."

The woman in the blue robes tilted her head, her eyes glassy. "You do not understand, the Calling is not yet finished. We must attend to the Work."

Shepard fingered her sniper rifle. "Sounds like this one's gone completely off her nut, Vasir."

The other asari nodded, the blunt outlines of her helmet masking her expression. "My orders were to kill her, not capture her, Shepard."

Shepard shrugged. "My orders were to capture her if it was safe, but the admiral who gave them to me didn't seem to give much of a shit to be honest. I personally say fry the bitch, if she's tangled up with Okeer and batarian slavers."

Vasir raised her voice again. "Last chance, Ylana."

Something in the other asari's eyes flickered. "You do not understand." The plinth she stood on began to rotate, revealing black-tinted spars of metal now laced through her body, piercing her legs and meshed with her spine. Ylana spread her arms, a smile on her features. "We have been given a Gift of Sight. You cannot stop us."

With that, the other Triune gave a ululating howl and advanced, firing as they came. Vasir shook her head as her people reacted, firing back and diving for cover.

The firefight was ugly as it was brief. The Triune cultists were shambolic, barely remembering how to use cover, firing small pistols awkwardly, and throwing badly coordinated biotic attacks. Against the combined firepower of the asari and marines, they all died in less than a minute, purple splattering the floor in multiple places.

Ylana merely stood there, until Vasir shot her in the chest with her shotgun, and then her lifeless body slumped, still supported by the spars of black metal running through her. Shepard frowned as she got closer.

"That was anti-climatic."

Vasir was about to say something when the corpse began to chuckle quietly. Shepard whirled around, ODIN fixed on Ylana's form, but the asari woman was only laughing as strange blue wiring erupted from the wound in her chest.

The voice that emitted from her mouth was nothing like the faint, soft tones she'd used before, and yellow balefire burned in her eye-sockets. "The connection is weak and flawed, but it shall suffice."

Shepard backed up, jaw clenched. "Saren did this shit after we killed him. Tried to fucking sing us to death." She shot the twitching corpse of Ylana, but that only blew a gory crater in her stomach, one that more blue wires writhed in.

Vasir motioned forward her war priestess. "Burn this thing."

As the priestesses began, the corpse of Ylana gave a smile. "You think you can escape the snare that catches the hunter? Pitiful fools, you cannot succeed where we failed. The Work may have failed...but we have already found a new path."

Before it could say anything else, bright biotic fire engulfed it, constrained by a circular barrier held by the other priestess. The thing thrashed and shrieked, flashes of blue wiring erupting outwards, lashing at the unyielding barrier. The older of the two priestesses gave a yell of exertion, and a trio of spinning singularities hurled down from above, then a blast of power erupted.

The barrier shattered, sending Vasir and Shepard flying back and shaking the cavern, but when the light faded there was little left of the plinth except white-hot glowing metal, and a badly charred and malformed corpse, shot through with melted blue and black metal.

Vasir stared at the thing."What in the name of waves..."

Shepard stood, grimacing. "Yeah. I don't know what the shit it is, but somehow after we killed Saren, Nazara basically possessed him. Nearly killed us all with some kind of sonic attack until one of my marines shot him in the head with a fucking lance cannon. And according to Aethyta, Benezia had the same blue wiring shit growing through her whole body. There's part of the video not released to the public showing Aethyta cutting her goddamned hand off and it growing right the fuck back."

Vasir sighed, motioning to her soldiers. "Spread out and find any more survivors." She glanced at the plinth's wreckage folded her arms. "Well, I hope we find out what the shit was going on here, because this just raised more questions than it answered."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Searching the rest of the base took a good two hours, and several more isolated firefights – one of the corridors leading off from the big circular room lead deeper into the mountain, and more Triune and geth were there. The fights were more of the same – the Triune were barely capable of defending themselves, the geth still moving sluggishly and with little coordination.

A large array of holding cells was found, mostly containing the badly decayed remains of what looked like salarians in the process of turning into Tho'ian thralls. Other cells had dead Triune members in them, some of which had smashed their heads in against the stone walls, others who were simply dead, lying peacefully on the floor. Still others had a collection of asari, humans, and turians – all with batarian slaver marks – dead. Some had scars on their heads or bodies, where some kind of operations had been done. Vasir had the dead bagged and sent back up, for autopsy by Citadel medical personnel when they returned.

The big room was examined carefully and as much information extracted from the computers as possible, but none of it made much sense. The device they were building was some kind of communications relay, but it used technology no one in the strike force had a chance of understanding. Shepard sent images and what data she found to Liara, who brought in Traynor on the discussion.

Neither of them had many ideas either. Traynor suspected the device was some kind of hyperspace wave generator, tapping into some kind of higher energy states to effect true faster than light communications, but those were only theories held by professors back on Earth studying highly speculative ideas.

The device was not completed, and after taking careful scans of it, Vasir had the thing destroyed. It was possible Reaper technology and neither she nor Shepard wanted to take any chances.

The rest of the base was devoid of much else than living spaces, storage, and workshops to build equipment for working on the communications device. A few computers contained records, and it became clear that they were using a handful of geth ships to raid nearby pirate bases and ships for supplies, rather than try to obtain them elsewhere. There were also references to some heavier pirate forces being destroyed by 'the Watchers' but no clues as to who they might have been.

Shepard sighed. "Guess that explains what happened to the pirate bases we ran across."

Vasir nodded as she reviewed supply manifests. "Clever. If the quarians hadn't been out here looking for geth activity, she could have supplied herself by raiding pirates and no one would be the wiser."

Shepard nodded. "But why? What the hell was she trying to do? Build some kind of big antenna to what, call the fucking Reapers?"

Vasir shook her head as marines and asari hauled out computer components on grav-lift hand trucks, along with pallets of eezo. "Hard to say. If whatever took her over in the end was correct, though, it sounds like a Very Bad Thing. Whatever the 'Work' was, it said it failed, but that didn't matter. I don't like the sound of that."

Shepard wished she could pinch the bridge of her nose, and settled for folding her arms. "I wish this bullshit made more sense."

Vasir gave a faint chuckle. "It rarely does, really. Part of what you do as a Spectre is put together non-sense pieces others tend to overlook, Shepard. Think of yourself as less some kind of super-warrior girl, and more like … a spy-detective-sneaky person."

Shepard carefully kept any hint of amusement from her voice. "Is, ah, _spy-detective-sneaky person_ a formal title, or more of a casual one?"

Vasir gave a laugh, walking towards the center of the main chamber, examining the remaining machinery. "Just me being silly, but honestly, that's how it is. Spectres get all this media attention for shooting up bad guys but nine-tenths of my job is seeing patterns other people don't, and investigating far-flung bits to make a target that makes sense."

The asari Spectre folded her arms, the drape of her Spectre cape falling across her back as her over-sized shoulder pauldron shifted locations. "So let's review what we know and what we should be looking for. First, Ylana worked directly for and with Benezia and was, if what the hell she turned into back there is a clue, definitely indoctrinated and messed with Reaper technology."

Shepard nodded, and Vasir continued. "Two, she wasn't sighted at any point on the Citadel – I've been reviewing the security records, those not corrupted or lost. In fact, she hasn't been seen in public since the Eden Prime incident – she was sighted on Noveria very briefly. So she isn't involved in the fighting and blowing things up parts of Benezia's plans, whatever they were."

Shepard frowned. "Liara and I did some digging around one of Benezia's old hideouts...looks like if anything happened to her, she expected Ylana to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward."

Vasir tapped the chin of her helmet with an armored finger. "Makes sense. But moving forward towards what? We have some kind of high-powered communication device, experiments on plant zombies, some kind of connections with a crazy krogan warlord and batarians..."

Vasir was silent for several seconds, then sighed. "All we can get from this is that she was building this to contact someone...and if that glowing yellow shit was any indication, she was already talking to somebody. What we don't know is why she was working on it instead of whoever she was working for."

Shepard scowled behind her own helmet. "And this someone could be another fucking Reaper? Great." She rolled her shoulders, trying to work out tension in them. "I don't like what she said about a new path, either."

Vasir shrugged in the asari fashion, turning away. "Who can say what the tides will sweep in, Shepard? None of this has made a bit of sense from the beginning, as you yourself pointed out. But if I had to make a guess...Ylana was trying to build some kind of communication device as a backup. She was in contact with someone called 'the Watchers' who had technology powerful enough to reduce several fortified pirate bases to slag."

She turned to face Shepard. "At some point, Ylana was doing something with Tho'ian thralls and slaves, as well as something to do with Okeer. The report we got on what happened with Shiala suggested that the Tho'ian somehow undid indoctrination, and Rana Thanoptis has already told the Council that the main reason Saren was working with Okeer on those rachni-krogran things was they resisted indoctrination as well."

Shepard nodded. "And?"

Vasir shrugged. "Sounds like to me she was trying to cover her azure and prevent from being indoctrinated. Didn't work, for whatever reason, and she ended up like that. The people she worked for must have tumbled to the fact that she was trying to find a way out. Maybe that's why this place was so easy to take out. Or maybe that's why she had weird crap growing out of her." The asari threw up her hands. "More tide-damned questions we can't answer."

Shepard shook her head, and Vasir's voice took on a calculating note. "But I can guess one thing – they made damned sure she wouldn't be taken alive for us to question."

Shepard glanced over at the ruined carcass that had once been Ylana. "Why?"

Vasir walked away from the middle of the room. "Because with her dead, we have no clues or hints of where the trail goes from here, Shepard. Whatever this 'new path' is...we can't follow it. We know there is another player, but the Council is going to review this mess and assume the problem is handled."

Shepard could see that happening. "Then we should have made an attempt to take some prisoners, shouldn't we?"

Vasir gave a slow nod. "Most likely. Which is why I'm now wondering why the Council of Matriarchs was so insistent that Ylana be killed. I mean, in the long run, it was going to happen anyway – but the way they were talking it was like she knew something they didn't want the Citadel Council to find out." Vasir made a sound of disgust. "One more reason I dislike doing work for the Republic."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "The High Solarch told me that the name Nazara was on a stone in the Temple of Athame, and they knew something about that name. And she told me there was something Benezia was probably looking for – I don't remember all of the conversation, but is there something in the Temple they could be covering up?"

Vasir's voice became almost wary. "I've seen some of the Temple, but not all of it – parts are sealed off from even Spectres. So, yes, I suppose that's possible. The temple is very old and to be honest, who knows what the abyss is inside it. It is possible that the Matriarchs know something they're not telling – but that hasn't got much to do with this mess."

Shepard shrugged. "Now what?"

Vasir gestured. "We pack up everything and let the Council send in the STG to pick over whatever is left, and figure out what they can. Whatever Ylana was trying to do, it backfired in a big way, and at least we blew up this antenna thing before she could get it built. I'm not exactly sure where we go from here, but the Council is sure to tell me how I fucked it all up."

Shepard grinned. "And here I was thinking they only pulled that shit on me."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Shepard was amused, but not really surprised, to see that the Council really wasn't ever satisfied with _any_ Spectre's report.

After Vasir had summarized the actions – and the additional questions created by what they found – Valern was the first one to speak. "And you couldn't have subdued Ylana in a less destructive method than a _biotic firestorm detonated by multiple singularities_?"

Shepard was in her stateroom, and Vasir's haptic image on her comms repeater was smaller than that of the Citadel council's images, but she could still make out the mocking smile on the asari's face. "With all granted courtesy, Councilor, absolutely not. According to Spectre Shepard, and reports from Blade-mistress Aethyta, the blue wiring we saw was a clear sign of complete indoctrination – and enabled the user to survive death. I shot her in the heart with a Disciple shotgun and she laughed at me. I wasn't taking any chances."

Thin'Koris folded his arms, his faceplate gleaming from lights above. "Regrettable but understandable. What of geth activity?"

Shepard spoke up. "I've had my ship launch several probes – the vast majority of the geth were located in the outlying buildings as a defense force, and the orbital bombardment destroyed most of them. Even so, there weren't very many – I'd honestly expected to face down a geth fleet coming into the system, but there weren't even any orbital defenses. Other than the few warforms and the construction equipment, there was no sigh of geth activity."

Tevos' face set into a mask of calm. "And we have no insight into this device that was being worked on?"

Tela Vasir gave a shrug. "We copied what we could from the computers and did a detailed scan of the device, but it was using Reaper technology and was unsafe to transport, in my opinion. Given that it was clearly designed to call something, I can't imagine messing with it would end up in a happy result."

Sparatus glanced at Tevos before speaking. "With no further leads and no idea of who else might be involved, you have derailed any chance of us finding out more information, Spectre Vasir. A disturbing trend you seem to have."

Vasir snorted. "Look, I have to make calls every time I take action that could endanger lives. A rampaging techno-zombie and a thing that might have transmitted a feeding call to more of those Reaper things isn't something I'm going to take chances with!"

Shepard spoke. "I happen to agree with her, Councilors – this wasn't a situation where we had a lot of time to interpret events. We had to clear the system before more of Aria's ships showed up."

Udina finally spoke. "And of course you just had to blow up a number of her ships on your way in. I can already tell you two will get along just fine, given your impulse is to smash whatever you don't understand."

Shepard folded her arms. "Would it kill you, just once, to say 'Good job?', huh?"

Udina gave her a flat stare before clapping sarcastically. "Good job, Spectre. Do you feel better?"

She muttered 'jackass' under her breath as Sparatus spoke again. "For now, Spectre Vasir, return to the Citadel and we'll offload what you found for further investigation. The STG is tasked to capacity with the events in the Hegemony and scouting for geth, but we'll get around to going over the site in the next few weeks, assuming Aria's people don't scavenge it first."

Vasir nodded. "Stormwind's Spirit, out." Shepard killed her own comm, then tapped her a different link. "Pressly. Have Joker set course for the Citadel, and let me know when we hit the relay."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Aboard the Stormwind's Spirit, Tela Vasir engaged a special set of security software before making a second, far more encrypted call. She waited several seconds until the visage of Tetrimus appeared on her haptic view-screen.

The turian leaned forward. "The task is completed?"

Vasir nodded. "Yes, although it was going to happen anyway – the Matriarchy wanted Ylana killed, not taken alive. There's some ugly shit you have to answer to me, though – after I shot her, she sat up again and her eyes were glowing yellow."

Tetrimus nodded. "The Collectors have not been exactly forthcoming about why they wanted her taken out, but from what we gathered she was fairly useless to them. She was attempting to create a method for them to communicate with the Reapers, but once the Broker Network offered our more superior facilities and technology, her own usefulness became nil. The fact that she was investigating methods to reverse indoctrination was the final insult."

Vasir frowned. "But why not just make the damned things themselves?"

Tetrimus flicked a mandible. "The Collectors are … not flexible. They are, except for their few leaders, mostly drones. While they have the know-how and technology to create this communications device, they haven't done so. Based on what we have figured out about it and how it works, the reason for that that is due to the fact that activating it disrupts their ability to communicate – which would kill most of them."

Tetrimus tapped a talon on his metallic desk. "We are doing well with building the device, but the Broker feels we have only a handful of years before the strike begins. We will need to have our escape route clearly planned before that point."

Vasir gave a heavy sigh. "And we're sure fighting them is pointless?"

Tetrimus's glowing eye bobbed as he nodded. "Utterly. The more research we do and the more bits of their technology the Collectors show us, the more futile resistance seems. This is not the only galaxy they are active in – and they have done this for millions, tens of millions, of years. Better to flee and return once they are gone."

Vasir folded her arms. "Won't they have some plan for that kind of stunt?"

Tetrimus laughed. "The beauty of the situation is that they focus almost entirely on the mass relay system. The Broker plans for us to sit in dark space for a long span of time in the generation ships, before returning to the very edges of the galaxy and settling in systems not near any relays. Assuming we pick the proper location, we can find star clusters with as many as forty or more stars in fairly short FTL ranges and begin operations from there. As long as we are cautious, we will not be detected."

She let her arms fall to her sides. "I'm still not totally sold on this, Tetrimus... but it's better than just fucking dying. And I have to admit, the Republic and asari in general are so fucked up now that starting over fresh has a certain appeal. What next?"

Tetrimus tapped his talons together. "Now that Ylana has been handled, the Collectors have one other task for us to complete. The Broker has already begun moving pieces into place for this to take place, but the objective is to kill Shepard."

Vasir winced. "I rather like Shepard, and she's married to my favorite aunt's kid. Can't she be … turned? Or ignored?"

Tetrimus shook his head. "No. The Collectors were very firm on this point. They want her dead. That does not mean you will be involved in killing her, merely framing the proper viewpoint. And we do not have any need to kill Liara T'Soni at this juncture."

Vasir sighed. "What am I to do?"

She listened carefully to the detailed instructions, and her mind grimly grasped how it would work. "Alright. I can do that. The only problem I see is moving Shepard into place - the humans are very isolationist right now."

Tetrimus grinned. "We've already covered that, as it happens."

**O-ATTWN-O**

"Minister Saracino? Twofold-Mechanics Union representatives are holding on line two."

Charles Saracino stubbed out his rich Vegan cigar, frowning.

Becoming Minister of the Interior under the New Coleman Administration had given him a great deal of power and influence, but far too much of his time was wasted these days in lobbying and back-room politics. His program to clean up the school system and reduce alien influences in popular entertainment were working, and his allies had all prospered financially under his generous appropriations and various contract deals.

The current Prime Minister was bashing his head against the wall of President Windsor's disapproval, but Saracino himself had taken Senator Adkins' advice and dialed back his own anti-alien rhetoric. He'd even gone so far as to stomach his discomfort and proffer several valuable internal mining and engineering contracts to the quarians.

He had to admit, for a pack of space-faring gypsies, they didn't gouge on prices, and they did good work. They also didn't want to infiltrate human culture and replace it, which made them far more tolerable than the damned blues. Unfortunately, they needed a lot of attention to make sure they didn't get too carried away with their mining, and his comm-lines were always under attack by various mining and engineering unions, worried the quarians would steal jobs.

There was nothing he could do about that, though – and the unions were always strong Terra Firma supporters, so he had to keep them happy.

He sighed, tapping his comm-line. "Saracino here."

The voice that came out of the comm system was not at all human, and it certainly wasn't a union representative.

"Minister Saracino. If you have a moment, please go to your office window."

He frowned. Was this some kind of nut?

"It concerns certain unacceptable actions you have undertaken with underage females, Minister. Trust me, you don't want to disobey lest this get out on, let us say, the extranet."

Saracino's face broke out in cold sweat, as he shakily stood. He walked slowly to the broad bay window set into his tenth-floor offices in the Vancouver capital. On the roof of the tower adjacent to his own offices, he saw a slender female, wearing some kind of hood over her features, who waved cheerily, then vanished into thin air.

"The person you see has a complete video record of what happened to poor young Diantha Sivas, Larissa James, and Tanisha Jones. And enough incidental evidence to suggest that your Terra Firma party has done this sort of thing more than once. She's one keypress away from burst transmitting it to ANN, Westerlund News, the Commissariat, and GTMZ."

Saracino finally found his voice. "W-who is this? What do you want?"

The growling bass voice chuckled. "Who we are is … unimportant. We can make all this unpleasantness go away. We can make the three traumatized ladies in question disappear, ensure the incident never recurs – even plant evidence that elements of the NDP were trying to frame you. What we need in return is something that won't trouble you too much."

Saracino had dealt in dirty politics all his life. His father had never explained who his mother was, but he'd figured it out pretty easily once he did some digging. It had taken a lot more to figure out that his mother was deeply involved in Cerberus … and yet, once he knew that, knowing that his father had died due to the actions of turians, that his whole life might have been different if not for alien interference, his outlook changed.

He'd sabotaged rivals, had people killed, ruined lives. He played by no rule book but his own and was keenly aware that people wanted to be lied to. He'd turned Terra Firma from a pack of hooligans into a powerful political beast that had unified and taken over the government. And he'd done it all to protect humanity, and to ensure that in the end, humans would prosper over lesser, godless, corrupt alien things that plotted to kill or enslave them all.

He knew how the game was played, and he knew whoever was on the other end of the line had his number. If he didn't play along, not only would his life be ruined but his party would be shattered. Aliens would corrupt humanity and turn them into alien fucktoys or worse. His legacy – his mother's legacy – would be ruined.

He took a calming breath. "And what is it you want me to do?"

"A situation will soon arise in the Citadel Council. A mission will be required. Spectre Shepard must be on that mission. You will lend your voice to the argument and suggest that she is the best suited person for the job."

Despite himself, he sneered. "She's an alien-loving barbarian."

The voice on the other end of the line chuckled again. "And this mission will result in her death...and an opportunity for you to replace her with someone more acceptable to your kind, Minister."

He licked his lips. "I have no voice in the Council or in military matters."

The growling voice sounded almost amused. "But you do have vast influence over High Admiral Branson, since you and yours helped him to cover up the lies about his actions at Elysium, now don't you?"

He nearly bit his lip. "Who... how … how can you fucking know that!"

"The Broker knows everything, Minister Saracino. The choice is yours. You can either cooperate, or you can pay the price."

Saracino glanced around the office, thinking hard. "Y-you … I could tell them you're planning to kill Shepard!"

Even as he spoke, he heard a muted clanking sound. Before he could turn around, he felt the cold, stubby shape of a weapon in the small of his back, and a faint whining sound. An amused female voice sounded behind him. "Oopsie. But no. With the revelation of your crimes revealed, Saracino-dono, you would be driven to suicide. By the time the Commissars arrived you would be dead."

The growling voice sounded in the room again. "And do not think you could betray us and live, Minister. We are offering you a method to get everything you want, and the only cost is the life of someone you wanted dead anyway. After all, isn't that why your people were trying to kill the President?"

Saracino's face crumpled in despair. If the Broker knew that much, even if he tried to tell the Commissars about a plot to kill Shepard, he was a dead man.

"I'll...go along with what you say."

The pressure in his back vanished, and the voice over the comm spoke quietly. "Your cooperation is appreciated, Minister."


	34. Chapter 34 : The Hand of Hades

**A/N:**_ -insert ominous music here- _

_-insert hyena-like giggling here-_

_-insert a glass of scotch for Hei here- _

_Reviews are always welcome, positive or negative. _

* * *

_"I find the moment I love the most is when all the assorted pieces and segments of a carefully constructed plan snap into place ... and no one even sees the hand that moved them. It is as thrilling as any hunt, and much more satisfying."  
_

_– The Shadow Broker's Personal Files, as recovered by Liara T'soni  
_

* * *

Shepard didn't have a lot to do on the return trip to the Citadel, and was a bit worn down from the week-long search and constant vigilance they'd had to endure while operating so deep in Aria's territory.

With no clear orders demanding she get back as soon as possible, she instructed Pressly to move to shorter, four-section watches and give the crew some time to sleep and relax a bit. She spent most of the rest of the first day of the trip back working out in the gym and helping Liara with more translations of Prothean, and was clearing the day's messages from her terminal in her stateroom when the door chimed.

"Come!"

Jiong stepped through, alone, and walked over to her desk, sitting down and taking off his hat. A week of resting and having Sedanya fuss at him had done him a lot of good – the vaguely haggard edge to his features she'd seen earlier was gone, and the tense and sick worry in his eyes had cleared now that Susan was out of medical danger.

She set down the padd she had been reading – more media garbage, some nut on Vega had staged a protest against Shepard and had his face knocked in by a bunch of tourists from Dirth – and gave the Commissar a smile. "What brings you up from your dungeon, Jiong?"

He gave a weary sigh, shaking his head. "Only to check in with you and see how you are dealing with events."

She pursed her lips, then shrugged. "Overall? Pretty damn well. I'm satisfied with things. More than satisfied."

He nodded. "You mentioned in our previous conversation earlier in the week the concerns you had about your own psyche and that of Lady Liara. Susan has been recovering still and has not had much of a chance to talk Lady Liara, given that she is occupied in the science lab going over the handful of Prothean rubble you found in Ylana's base."

Shepard coughed politely. The bits of stonework had caught Shepard's eye, and with Vasir's people snatching up mostly computer related things – and stacks of eezo – having her own people grab the Prothean stuff seemed a good use of her time, given she and Liara were the only people who could really make use of it.

Thus far, Shepard hadn't much liked what she had read. There was no telling where the material came from – Ylana's people didn't keep good notes on much of anything – but it was clear that the material was from some sort of final Prothean hold out. The message – etched with Liara thought was some kind of plasma tool – had described vast assaults of indoctrinated Protheans, sketched crazed theories of defenses and exotic energy weapons, and talked about the falling Prothean Empire as it fell apart.

Shepard had stopped translating when she came to one of the final segments, one that ended in the statement 'They come, eyes glowing yellow in the dark'. It reminded her far too much of Ylana's final moments, and she wanted to get that image out of her head badly.

She gave Jiong a faint smile. "She's tied up with it because there's useful information in them, but they're a depressing goddamned thing to read."

Jiong nodded. "The fact that you can so easily translate Prothean is going to be what derails your military career, you know. From what I have heard, Rear Admiral Vandefar is frothing at the mouth to have you transferred out of Second Fleet and to R&amp;D."

Shepard shook her head. "Yeah, not fucking happening. I don't mind helping out if I can, but that nutjob worries me on waaay too many levels to be comfortable working for. Anyway. You were talking about our last discussion..."

Jiong folded his hands together, handsome features tightening. "Yes. I've given some thought to your statements, and I think the only answers I can give you are unpleasant. Susan has spent most of her bed rest in medical doing the best she can to trawl the extranet for information on asari bonding, while I have engaged some more exotic resources of the Commissariat to perform additional searches."

He pulled out a padd. "From what we've been able to gather – which isn't much, sadly – the asari bonding is of varying strengths. The strength of the bond is dependent upon the strength of biotics each partner possesses. For non-biotic non-asari, the bonds are by definition weak. Only the very strongest shared emotions, in close physical proximity, tend to be picked up, as well as brief flashes of memories and the very occasional shared dream."

Jiong's jaw tightened. "The bond you and Lady Liara seem to be engaged in is called a 'vethrass', or a Soulforge. It is a rather rare condition, usually employed by two asari who have lost bond-mates already, that has a tendency to blur the lines between the psyches of the two people involved. The Soulforge is mostly discussed in echas fictional novels – stories of lost bond-mates and the sorrow that entails. Very little hard scientific data exists."

Shepard folded her arms. "But you found _some_, yes?"

Jiong nodded slowly. "From every story we've come across, and the bits we were able to find out independently, the Soulforge is forbidden and dangerous because it has a very high lethality rate. Only a few hundred asari have ever gone through this type of bond. And in the situations where one partner died, the other one either died, went into a non-responsive coma, or completely lost their minds."

Shepard frowned. "How the fuck is that even possible?"

Jiong sighed. "The bond appears to be utilizing some form of bionic resonance and matches up the bio-electric fields of the two partners. Without any way of experimental testing I can't be sure, but I suspect the damage – and danger – is when the two partners are actually close enough to be affected by the bond, and the other partner is tied to the dying one."

He gave a weak smile. "In the stories, the two joined partners rarely if ever left each others side – there was lot of flowering poetry about the 'desolation of being apart'. Thus, the few deaths recorded in such .. fictional sources was always where one partner died at the side of the other. I have conjectured that if one of you were to die outside of the bond's effective range, I suspect the effect would be no more severe than any other bond-shattering – depression, grief, a sense of lack of motivation – but not lethal."

He paused. "There is only one example of that, and it was in pre-spaceflight asari myths, but it seems to bear out the theory."

Shepard grimaced. "I can feel Liara's emotions from over a mile away and her presence from several miles."

Jiong sighed. "Then at least if we are in high orbit and you are on the ground, the effect will not instantly kill her if you are lost. The other danger of the Soulforge is that all too often, the two partners begin losing any sense of who they are. Several dozen asari who experienced this bond slowly went insane over the years as they couldn't figure out how one person could manifest in two bodies. Others actually slew each other, for reasons that are unclear in the texts."

He exhaled. "As a rule, Major, I am reluctant to pore over syrupy and highly mythological romance tragedies when examining what would seem to be a dangerous medical condition. Given a lack of any other source material, the only other place we can turn to for information would be the Temple of Athame. Their mind healers are often referenced in the stories as healing some of the problems with the Soulforge."

She nodded. "I might do that. In the interim, assuming I don't fucking _die_, how can I work with Liara to get us both to a slightly better place in terms of … well, I guess how we relate?"

Jiong smiled again. "The sheer irony of asking a Commissar for relationship advice is tremendous. However, I think the most positive way of handling it is to play to your strengths, Shepard. You are blunt, you do not shade the truth, and you care deeply for Lady Liara. Be direct, and face the problem rather than quietly hoping it goes away."

Jiong folded his arms. "It's not like she's going to break up with you, after all, given her own psychological issues."

Shepard snorted. "I know that." She gestured to the pads on the desk, to the room itself. "But I have all this … THIS to deal with. Being a noble – which I know nothing about. Dealing with my promotion, and being told I'm going to be promoted again soon. Facing the ugly fact the Reapers are coming and no one seems panicked by that but me. Worrying about whatever the hell the batarians will do, or the geth, or fuck – my own government."

She didn't mention the horrific things she'd found on Kyle's computers, but her eyes darkened. "And other things. Bottom line, compared to all that, it is very hard to focus on what seems like...hell, you know? Drama? I've got a beautiful wife, smart, insatiable in bed, loves me eternally and who I can actually talk to. Why dig and take a chance on messing things up when half the time it's hard to really say what I feel?"

Jiong nodded. "An understandable problem. But life does not stop because of the responsibility we end up bearing upon our shoulders, Major. I hate to be grim, but a war against the geth is likely to see you on the front lines sooner or later. I think a good discussion of the risks – and your worries, and how she is thinking on these things – is necessary sooner rather than later."

He sighed. "The other thing I wanted to talk to you about was PRIDE updates."

She shook her head. "Ugh. Again?"

Jiong smiled. "You'll like these. Based on the fact that it's been more than several months since I did the initial reviews, I decided to revisit some of the command crew. Pressly and Colms are unchanged – the latter is still a raving lunatic under a calm shell, I think. Lady Liara also remains identical."

She nodded and he continued. "But whatever Joker and Tali'Zorah got up to on leave had a _significant_ impact. I interviewed them both on the way in – ostensibly, because BuPers was requesting an update to prep their records for promotion certifications."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "And?"

Jiong exhaled. "Mr. Moreau is more … at peace with himself now. While he still uses sarcasm and dark humor as a defense mechanism, he seems much less concerned with what people think of him and much more concerned with where he is going in life. In the interview he mentioned how much he enjoyed 'whipping the dog shit' out of Ahern's pilots and instructing the battlegroup's fighter pilots and indicated he might consider a break from piloting to teach."

He leaned back. "And Tali'Zorah seemed equally … more relaxed. When I inquired about her plans to finish her Pilgrimage, she seemed amused by the concept, and said she'd done all the growing up she needed to do. Going back to the Flotilla was something she never planned on not doing in the initial interview – now it is as if she's disappointed in her people. And she asked me very pointed questions about her legal status in terms of where she could live inside the Alliance."

Shepard thought about that. She wasn't very good at reading people, but Tali had become a lot less stressed out after leave. Not really that much more mature – she still had a slight tendency to whine about certain things – but more inclined to try to figure out why humans did something in the way that did than immediately bring up how the quarians did it.

Doctor Sedanya had also told her that the clean room had been used almost a dozen times while the ship was in drydock according to the access logs, and Shepard didn't need to think very hard to figure out why that might be. She leaned back in her own chair and shrugged, a small smile on her lips. "I think she finally managed to figure out that Jeff was more important to her than the approval of her jackass of a dad – or the Flotilla."

Jiong shrugged. "And that is a profoundly un-quarian believe, except for exiles. In any event, they are now solid threes."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Good. As for her being an exile...isn't that almost what she is right now, anyway? She's an Alliance officer, calling herself 'nar Kazan' and not 'nar Rayya', and probably banging Joker. That's about as far away from giving a flying fuck about what the quarians think of her as I can imagine."

Jiong sighed. "Lord Father above, I wish we could convince you to inject _some_ minute amounts of delicacy – or at least less random _invective_ – into your manner of speech."

She inclined her head. "And if I am engaged in speaking with someone who should require such eloquence, I didn't waste all of my time on my sojourn upon Intei'sai engaged in various carnal pleasures, but undertook to improve my vocabulary."

Jiong raised both eyebrows, then scowled. "You memorized that, didn't you? Cheating scoundrel."

Shepard erupted in giggles.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Despite her determination to follow Jiong's advice, she found herself more than a bit nervous later on that night, when a weary Liara finally came into their quarters.

Shepard had changed into a t-shirt and a set of soft, silken pants – one of her wedding gifts – and was stretched out on the small couch in the corner of the room, reading a padd on noble rights and responsibilities. She set it down on the side table, and took a sip of the expensive scotch she'd bought on Intei'sai before sitting up.

"You finally get done with the slabs?"

Liara nodded, pulling open her uniform jacket and shrugging out of it. The standard Alliance undershirt clung tightly to her upper body,and Shepard never got tired of seeing that. The asari stretched and tossed her top in the hamper at the base of the bed before walking over and flopping onto the couch, laying her head in Shepard's lap.

"Yes, finally. It was … distressing to analyze, but I managed to put together at least part of the theory behind the one energy weapon being described. I wrote up a report and sent it to the department of Research and Development – Rear Admiral Vandefar was on the comm with me, discussing the idea. She thinks they can come up with a 'burst-beam' missile that fires off these energy blasts in a few months."

Shepard nodded. "That's good. We need all the fucking guns we can get." She lit a fresh cigarette, and Liara made a grabby motion with her hands. Laughing, she handed it to her, and lit herself another.

Liara was quiet for almost a minute, before slowly sitting up, dumping her ashes in the small tray on the table and facing Shepard more squarely. "You are nervous and worried."

Shepard shrugged. "Just doing a lot of thinking about us. The whole bond thing. I had Jiong do some research...and it is even more dangerous than you thought it might be."

Liara sighed, leaning back on the couch. "I am not entirely illiterate when it comes to romantic fiction among my people. What we experienced sounded much like the vethrass to me. There is little we can do about it now."

Shepard tilted her head. "No, but I want to be … open and honest about this." She took Liara's free hand with her own, staring at her blue eyes. "I'm not real good at figuring out all the right words to say."

Liara smiled. "Perhaps not, but they are in your heart nonetheless."

Shepard shrugged. "Maybe. But I know that no matter how careful I am or how cautious I become, I'm not going to live even a tenth as long as you are. I may die tomorrow, or in a decade, or in sixty years – but I will die sooner or later. And Jiong is saying that when I do, it could seriously mess you up."

Liara nodded, taking another puff of her cigarette. "I am aware, Sara. It does not really matter."

Shepard sighed. "Of course it matters. I don't want you to die when I do just because of what is in our heads – "

Liara kissed her. "Sara. I should have _died_ in the heat of Therum, trapped by my own stupidity. I should have died in the science lab of the Normandy when I foolishly linked with you, so eager to study the message the Beacon left in your mind that I forgot the danger. I should have died in many other places – and yet I did not. You saved me."

Liara took a deep breath. "It is hard for most asari to find a reason to live after a bondmate dies. Many succumb to despair, or depression. Some go out and try to find another bond-mate – usually an asari, unable to take the pain of watching one they love age and die slowly. I have no illusions about what I face when you no longer live – red madness, or brutal mental collapse."

She kissed Shepard again. "But I will not lie and pretend I will want to live if you are dead, either."

Shepard closed her eyes. "I don't want you dying because I do. You have so much to do. So much you could do." She opened her eyes and took a shaky breath. "I'm _not_ worth dying over."

Liara smiled sadly. "And neither am I. The danger to you is the same as the danger to me – if I am killed, the backlash will crush your own mind as well." She ran her hand against Shepard's jawline, eyes becoming sad. "We saved each other, but that chain that binds us is not one that we can escape from."

Shepard shook her head. "I don't want to escape. I just want you to ... be safe. If we can't do that, then at least we need to be honest about what is happening to us. You and I. I can't just let you drift along in my wake, Liara, and then die if I am unlucky enough to catch a bullet."

Liara leaned back, puffing on her now shortened cigarette. Shepard's own had gone out, ignored in the ashtray. "Sara, you are not thinking this through. When you die, I follow – there are no other dreams I have save finding as much joy, and love, and satisfaction in that span as I can. I know what Susan has said, but she truly cannot grasp what I face."

Liara put out the cigarette. "My mother was a traitor to my entire people, who have turned their backs on me. My aithntar – full of regrets she can't change, desperate to find some small place in my life." Her voice hardened. "Or as you would put it, a half-assed attempt to make right a century of wrong. The few members of my family I can tolerate I will never see again, probably – lest the entire House be tainted by associating with me."

Liara turned back to face Shepard. "My past life is gone. I have not abandoned my joy at learning new things, or even my little hobby of studying the Protheans. But I am an Alliance officer, and married to you. Those things come before _anything_ else, and they do not allow anything else to interfere."

Shepard grimaced. "I get that. But you are warping who you are to be what I need. And you're doing it because you have this need to be useful."

Liara nodded, lips curving. "I see you are being blunt. I will try to do the same." A slightly sad look came into the asari's eyes. "You are right. In a way, you are doing much of the same thing. You try to rein in your temper, to make sure you always tell me how much I matter, to make time to talk to me and let me know you love me. You have started to spend the time you once used to brood to help me with my Prothean studies, and you make sure whenever you feel me becoming sad or lonely to show up to cheer me up. And I appreciate all of that, even if it is you reacting to who I am."

Shepard had not realized she was really doing much of that, but listened as Liara continued. "If I have changed myself, it is because I chose to do so." A hardness entered her voice, her gaze. "You worry I am forcing myself to enjoy what you do in terms of sexual release? I am not forcing anything. It has happened, and if I could spend half the day with you fucking me senseless I would."

She slid across Shepard's lap, straddling her. "You worry I am fixated on you. I am. What else am I to do with my life, now that my mother has ruined it? I am married to you, regardless of what you or I wanted, because there was no choice. No choice in being bonded. No choice in you needing me to stay sane. I got what I dreamed about – and you expect me to flee from it?"

Shepard was keenly aware of the cool weight of Liara against her body, and trying not to react to it. "I know all that, baby. But I also know there are times where you feel lost and worried. Or when you start thinking of home and get depressed and come to me to take your mind off things, and end up in bed just to blank your thoughts."

Liara shrugged. "We are not normal people. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy our lives and enjoy normal things. But I will not lie and tell you that I am willing to change how I react. I know to you, that it must seem obsessive. Maybe it is. I cannot help that. I know I have only a little time before you are taken from me forever, by asari standards. And even if I survive that, I cannot imagine how I could keep living, keep going."

Shepard kissed her. "I don't want you worrying if you don't make yourself useful that I'll leave you, or lose interest. I...I think part of me likes it that you are so …" She trailed off.

Liara nodded. "You like the idea I cannot hurt you or leave you. And you feel badly about that when you should not. You need that, Sara. You need to know that as deeply as possible, because you HAVE been hurt so badly. I know that you would never leave me...but a part of me is still convinced that I am not enough for you. So yes – I push myself into things. I push myself to be a better officer. I push myself into working out, into studying, into being there for you."

She slid her body closer, a smirk forming. "On occasion, I push myself onto your hand." She felt a flare of heat as Shepard blushed, and pushed her lover's shoulders back, kissing her.

"I am yours, Sara. To love. To use. To own, if that is what your soul needs to be at peace. I am not going to fight that, because you give me what I need. A place to belong. A need I can meet, a goal I can run towards."

Shepard's hands were on Liara's body as words became difficult, and then they were on the ground and thought became impossible.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Shepard awoke groggily, feeling sore all over. She blinked, and realized she was laying on the floor, and Liara was on top of her. The mere feeling of the cool body against her own was enough to make her shiver as she remembered the past couple of hours.

Shepard was utterly spent, and she had no idea what time it was or how long until they hit the Citadel, so she groaned and pulled Liara up with her as she sat up, blinking blearily.

The clock on her desk read 3:50 AM, so at least no one would be expecting her up anytime soon. She checked Liara out, wincing at the usual collection of injuries, then lifted her up and placed her on the bed, before limping across to the corner where the medical bot was and booting it up.

By the time the bot was done patching up her more serious issues, Liara was sitting up, with a slightly dreamy expression on her features. "Goddess, my throat is sore."

Shepard chuckled. "You about screamed your head off before you passed out the last go round." She flexed her wrist, wincing, then stood up. "Come on, Dr. Fixit needs to patch up that abrasion – that trick you used with the dialed down warp is … a bit _much_."

Liara's smile was so dirty that Shepard shivered as she walked over to the robot. "I will keep that in mind."

Shepard showered and bandaged a few scrapes and claw marks up while Liara finished up, dressing in the robe she'd somehow ended up stealing from the T'Soni compound when they left Thessia so long ago. The fluffy white thing barely came down enough to be decent, but it was sinfully comfortable. She sat down on the couch, lighting a cigarette, and let her eyes roam over Liara's body in absent appreciation.

While Liara got done with fixing her own issues and showering, Shepard finished her cigarette, then grimaced at the mess on the floor and, using a towel, cleaned up the decking. She could just imagine the mortification on Pressly's face if he ever came in an found evidence of crazed sex on the decking.

_Poor bastard would probably faint dead away_, she thought, laughing to herself at the image.

She chuckled again as she imagined what he would end up saying, pausing to get another towel to dry her hair some more, and when Liara got done showering, watched her put on a longer black robe the asari had bought somewhere. She glared at her wife as she merely toweled off her crests and was done.

"It's so not fair you don't have hair to bother with."

Liara shrugged, smiling as she sat down next to Shepard. "I am sure some asari would say that is one more sign of our superiority."

Shepard snorted. "Now that you got the hornies out of your system, you feel any different about what I said earlier?"

Liara picked up a cigarette and lit it, her delicate blue lips wrapping around in it in a way Shepard always found hard not to stare at. "Not really, Sara. I do understand you worry about it, and feel guilty about it. But whatever I have become is something I am at peace with. I am happy – much happier than I have ever been in my life. I am working in the service of a people who respect not only me, but respect my accomplishments, as few as they are. And I have a wife who needs the kind of support I offer."

Shepard sighed. "I just worry about the cost to you, love. I don't want you feeling … useless or unworthy."

Liara nodded at that. "And I will … try to work on that. The love I feel from you – the delight when you see me, the happiness you feel around me, the way you get grumpy when I am not near – these help with that."

Shepard folded her arms. "I do _not_ get grumpy when you aren't around."

Liara patted her arm. "Yes you do, dear." She took another puff from the cigarette, then frowned. "I do not think, in some ways, that you are looking at all aspects of our situation in the light that I am, though. Or rather, Alfred and Susan are not."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "In what way? I mean...I had a talk with Jiong earlier today, like I said..."

The asari leaned forward a bit, eyes narrowing. "I know. It came to me while we bonded. I am … unsure of what I feel. Merely that while I do not think Jiong and Susan are bad people, or that they are lying regarding their concern about our relationship...it seems strange for them to focus on our bond as a source of such concern."

Shepard idly scratched the back of her neck, wincing as the movement made the sore muscles of her shoulder flare up. "Jiong is going to do whatever it takes to make sure I'm still useful to the Alliance. It's a little cold-blooded, but I can't blame him for that."

Liara shook her head. "I do not think that is the worry. They are more concerned, at the end of the day, with you becoming more like me. Perhaps they fear you will become unwilling to risk my life by risking yours. Or they feel if I am killed you will also be killed and wish to avoid that. If that is the case, they may encourage you to move into other fields besides ground combat."

Shepard stared at the plain decking below her bare feet, noting absently she needed to trim her toenails. She took a deep breath. "I don't know. This – being a soldier, fighting – is all I've ever known how to do."

Liara nodded. "But it is not all you can do now. You could work on Prothean translations. You could go back to Intei'sai and deal with being a noble. You don't have to be a Spectre, or a soldier if you do not want to. Maybe they are more worried as we get closer and closer your perspectives will change, and they want to have you distance yourself from me."

Shepard snorted. "If that's the case, then they're doing a really bad job. I have no idea what's coming down the line, but after what I learned … on our last little trip after our honeymoon...I can't just quit. Someone has to stop the shit these people are up to. And no one else in the Alliance but me is a Spectre who can do that."

Liara nodded. "And I was not encouraging you to stop. As much as I fear what may come, I know you, Sara. You could never be happy sitting around somewhere with nothing but peace."

Shepard snorted. "I could get used to it, you know."

Liara put out her smoke. "Only for a while. I can make you forget your past, and the wounds you carry, but I cannot heal the scars. You would be constantly wondering how many good marines died because you were not in the fight. Or what other horrors were being done now that you were no longer there to stop them."

Shepard shrugged. "Maybe. On the other hand, I think I could like just not doing much of anything for a while. I never had a chance to just relax like I did on Intei'sai...and after years of constant missions and fighting and a few days between each one to heal up – it was wonderful."

Liara smiled widely. "Should I venture a guess as to what parts of our vacation were the most wonderful?"

Shepard smirked. "No, you should not. Over-sexed fiend."

Liara made a sound somewhere between a snort and a giggle. "A particular human phrase about glass houses and rocks comes to mind." She stood, running her hands over her crests, and took a deep breath.

"Whatever comes of our bond, Sara – I do not regret a moment of it. I will do what I can to make sure I am always here for you, and you will do what you can to keep me safe. To keep us both safe. If there are days I question my worth...then there are also days you still wonder if you yourself are worth anything. We cannot be expected to get over all our problems in a mere year or two. We have all our lives in front of us to grow and heal."

She bent, kissing Shepard on the forehead, and Shepard smiled. "Alright. Just...when we get some time, can we ask your father about this? Jiong mentioned the Temple of Athame might know something. If we're stuck this way, I don't mind – I just want to know what I've gotten us both into so I know what to expect."

Liara nodded, then tilted her head. "We can, although my aithntar is hardly on good terms with anyone in the Temple." She paused. "The High Solarch reached out to you once, perhaps you could message her directly."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Yeah, because the asari pope is gonna want to talk to me about my sex life." She laughed, then frowned as the comm-link on her desk chimed. "It's four in the fucking morning...Jesus." She walked over to the desk. "Shepard. This had better be fucking good."

The tired voice of Pressly sounded. "I think you need to come to the bridge ma'am. We just got some … unpleasant flash traffic."

Shepard frowned. "Be there in ten." She clicked off. "God, what the fuck has gone wrong now."

By the time she reached the CIC, Pressly was standing at her command station, scowling at the main comms display. She walked up, dressed in fatigues, and tapped him on the shoulder. "What's up?"

Pressly grimaced, jaw muscles dancing. "We just got a high prority flash message over the comms system. If it's not read by the CO in another twenty minutes the VI will shut the engines off until you read it. It's...bad, ma'am."

He turned the comm console to face her, and the words blared out in bold letters on the screen.

ATTN: ALL FLEET UNITS, POLITICAL OFFICERS, GROUND COMMAND UNITS, AND CITIZENS.

FROM: COMMISSARIAT HIGH COMMAND, UPON THE ORDERS OF THE HIGH LORDS OF SOL

MESSAGE BEGINS

AT 0245 MAIN EARTH STANDARD TIME, A FREIGHTER IN HIGH ORBIT ABOVE EARTH REPORTED MINOR SOFTWARE GLITCHES IN NAVIGATION. SIX MINUTES LATER, IT PERFORMED AN UNAUTHOREIZED FTL JUMP AND SLAMMED INTO THE SOUTHERN WINDSOR ESTATES IN NOVA SCOTIA.

HIS MAJESTY THE PRESDIENT JAMES WINDSOR, PRINCE RYAN WINDSOR, PRINCESS SASHA WINDSOR AND SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY TWO PERSONELL ARE SEVERELY WOUNDED. PRINCE ANDERS WINDSOR AND HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN ARE DEAD ALONG WITH FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY NINE OTHERS. CIVILIAN CASUALTIES ARE STILL BEING ESTIMATED, CURRENT ESTIMATE IS UPWARDS OF THIRTY THOUSAND DEAD AND AS MANY AS FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND INJURED OR EXPOSED TO EEZO.

MOST OF NOVIA SCOTIA IS DESTROYED. EMERGENCY SERVICES RESPONDING. VICE PRESIDENT HUERTA IS CURRENTLY ACTING AS PRESDIENT UNTIL PRESIDENT WINDSOR REGAINS CONCIOUSNESS. CRIMINAL ELEMENTS ARE ENGAGED IN LOOTING AND FIGHTING POLICE FORCES. COMMISSARS ARE BEING DEPLOYED TO THE REGION NOW.

CONSTERNO BATTLE ALERT IS SET AND THE SOLGUARD IS DEPLOYING.

COMMISSARIAT LEGIONS ARE IN THE PROCESS OF DEPLOYMENT. ALL SHIPS – MILITARY OR CIVILIAN – IN ORBIT AROUND ANY ALLIANCE COLONY ARE REQUIRED TO IMMEDIATELY CONDUCT A FULL SOFTWARE PURGE AND SLAVE ALL FTL PLOTTERS TO COMMISSARIAT CONTROL. ANY SHIP FAILING TO DO SO WILL BE DESTROYED.

ALL ALIEN VESSELS CURRENTLY IN ALLIANCE SPACE IN ORBIT ARE INSTRUCTED TO BREAK ORBIT IMMEDIATELY. ANY RESISTANCE OR ATTEMPT TO STAY IN ORBIT WILL BE MET WITH VIOLENCE. UPON BREAKING ORBIT, SUCH VESSELS CAN EITHER COMPLY WITH THE ABOVE REQUIREMENT TO SLAVE FTL PLOTTERS TO COMMISSARIAT CONTROL AND PERFORM A COMPLETE SOFTWARE PURGE, OR LEAVE ALLIANCE SPACE AT MAXIMUM RATED SPEED.

ALL NON-ALLIANCE CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO REPORT TO COMMISSARIAT CLEARANCE CENTERS BY NO LATER THAN 1500 TODAY. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN EXPULSION OR ARREST. ALL RESTRICTED CITIZENSHIP PERSONS ARE COMMANDED TO REPORT TO SECURITY FORCES IMMEDIATELY OR YOU WILL BE EXECUTED.

ALLIANCE CITIZENS TRAVELLING OUTSIDE OF ALLIANCE SPACE OR ON THE CITADEL ARE INSTRUCTED TO HOLD YOUR POSITIONING. ALLIANCE CIVILIAN SHIPS OUTSIDE ALLIANCE SPACE SHOULD DOCK AT THE CITADEL UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. ANY ATTEMPT TO ENTER ALLIANCE SPACE WITHOUT AUTHORIZED CLEARANCE WILL RESULT IN YOUR SHIP BEING IMPOUNDED OR DESTROYED.

DIPLOMATIC VESSELS WILL BE PROVIDED AN ESCORT.

MARTIAL LAW HAS BEEN DECLARED. ALL ALLIANCE MILITARY FORCES ARE TO TRANSIT IMMEDIATELY TO ALLIANCE SPACE. FIFTH FLEET IS TO BREAK DOCK FROM THE CITADEL AND RETURN TO BEKENSTEIN IMMEDIATELY.

THESE ORDERS ARE BY THE HAND OF THE HIGH LORDS OF SOL AND THE HIGH COMMISSARIAT COMMAND AND SUPERSEDE ANY AND ALL CONFLICTING OR COUNTERVEILING ORDERS. DISOBEDIENCE WILL BE PUNISHED. GO WITH THE GRACE OF OUR FATHER IN THIS DARK TIME.

Shepard stared at the screen, feeling her stomach sink lower and lower with each line. She shook her head in disgust. "Change course for Bekenstein as soon as possible, Pressly, and have Traynor get in contact with the Office of Presidential Communication for me as soon as possible. Also have her notify the Citadel of our change of course and that I'll be on the commlink if they need me."

Pressly nodded.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Shepard and Liara sat in Shepard's stateroom, watching the comms display with mounting horror and unease.

Rioting had broken out in several Alliance colonies, as initial news reports had suggested the tramp freighter that had crashed into Earth had been turian. Later reports clarified it was an older turian ship but crewed entirely by humans, but by that time people were flinging all kinds of crazed conspiracy theories around. This wasn't helped by reports of vandalism and violence in the arcologies on Earth, who reacted violently to martial law.

The Commissars had sealed off downtown Vancouver and most of Arcturus, and the Solguard was everywhere, with all of Sol System in a high-security lockdown. News outlets transmitted what they knew, but it was little more than had gone out in the message from Alliance Command hours before.

The national governments of Earth were putting their own police forces on high alert, while most colonies had set up spaces high above the planet for ships to park in. So far, examination of over five thousand civilian vessels had found no traces of any kind of software that would take over and perform a manual FTL jump, so the current theory was the ship must have had some kind of highly customized FTL plotter. Such alterations to a plot computer were not only highly illegal but difficult to perform, and would have required extensive work.

In other words, it was an assassination attempt. The only reason everyone in Nova Scotia wasn't dead was that the arcology's outer casing had absorbed most of the impact, and that the downtown area's secondary environmental shielding had blocked much of the rest of it. Even so, another ten thousand people had come down with Environmental Shock Syndrome from exposure to the outside air, and the city ruins were being evacuated as fires raged out of control and gangers battled Commissariat lancers. God only knew how many people had been exposed to eezo, but several hundred had already died of eezo exposure complications. The hospitals in Nova Scotia and the surrounding areas were overloaded and the Alliance was landing medical frigates from the fleet as fast as they hit the Charon Relay, but it was ugly and getting uglier.

The Kazan was currently in very high orbit around Bekenstein, along with most of the Fifth Fleet, the ship's navigation computers being remotely scanned and checked by powerful patrol ships using remote connections. Shepard had been waiting for hours for some kind of orders, aside from being given a parking orbit and told to stay put. Repeated messages to the Office of the President had merely given automated answers boiling down to 'please wait'.

When Traynor finally said an incoming message for her was on its way, she was relieved. "Route to my stateroom, lieutenant."

Liara had moved to one side of the room, out of range of the visual pickup, and Shepard squared her shoulders as the Alliance logo displayed on the haptic screen, and then a heavyset man appeared.

He was handsome, in a thickset, blunt fashion, his Hispanic features almost ageless. Only the gray at his temples and his thin goatee hinted he was older than thirty five, but his eyes were cold and hard. When he spoke, his voice was almost flat and without inflection, curiously slow and tired sounding.

"Spectre Shepard, this is Vice President Culpultec Huerta. I am currently acting in my capacity as President in this dire time. I regret it has taken me some time to contact you, but as you can imagine, things right now are chaotic."

She nodded. "I do understand, Mr. President. I was calling to clarify what I am supposed to do – I was given very specific orders by President Windsor to only obey orders directly from his offices."

Huerta's eyes narrowed, but his voice remained monotone. "I am afraid I was given no information on any special orders or plans regarding you, Major. The President had not even informed me you were of any special note aside from your nobility and accomplishments. That being said, the comms officer at the Office of Presidential Communications confirmed your special arraignments as a fact. I am afraid that without further guidance from His Majesty, or Ms. Elizabeth Windsor-Turham, I am without data on the situation."

He spread his hands. "For now, I have no idea what to tell you except to follow lawful orders from the High Admiral and Alliance Command. If they suggest anything you find untoward, feel free to contact me directly and I will attempt to ascertain what is happening – but for the most part, until His Majesty awakens, or the Minsters decide he is unfit for office and stage elections, there is little I can do."

She nodded. "I understand, sir. Admiral Hackett gave me some standing orders I can go ahead and follow for now. If there is anything I can do to be of assistance, please let me know."

The Vice President nodded. "There is one thing. The Council was in the process of reviewing some sort of data from a recent mission you and another Spectre undertook. The President said something about needing to meet with me to brief me on the latest developments, since he would have to head to the Citadel in order to deal with something. I am operating in the dark and I fear Councilor Udina said he was unable to go into more details with me."

She nodded sourly. "He's under a lot of pressure, sir. But he's usually reasonable. If he's not telling you something, there is probably a good reason for it."

Huerta nodded. "Perhaps, but I don't wish to hinder any ongoing plans the President has already set in motion. I will contact the Commissariat and inform them I am tasking you with heading to the Citadel and liasoning with Councilor Udina. Once you reach the Citadel, please try and see if there is anything the Council needs for you to do, as I strongly suspect there is little you will be doing for the Alliance until the situation stabilizes."

She thought that was a very common sense suggestion and smiled."I appreciate it, sir. The Kazan took some minor damage in our last fight and I'd rather get it fixed up now than later."

He smiled in return, although it looked stiff. "Then I wish you good luck, Spectre." He killed the comm link, and Shepard exhaled.

Liara frowned. "Was it just me or did he seem particularly stiff?"

Shepard shook her head. "Well, it's kind of a long story..."

By the time Shepard got done explaining to Liara about Huerta's accident, his technical brain-death, the legal messes, the VI and gray-box uproar, and his recovery, twenty minutes had passed. Pressly walked into the stateroom just as she finished speaking.

"Just got a transmission from Fleet Command – they have authorized us to transit to the Citadel and dock. We don't have Commissariat clearance to transit through the relay yet, but they said it's being worked on."

Shepard stood. "Good. Have Joker lay in the course and bring us to the relay as rapidly as possible. Once we get clearance, that is."

**O-ATTWN-O**

The arrival of the Kazan to the Citadel took, as it turned out, another two and half days, despite the it only being a four hour trip. While Fleet Command accepted the Vice President's order, the relay was locked down by the Commissariat, and they had not let the Kazan make the jump until they had clearance from their own chain of command.

And arriving at the Citadel found them in a staggering mess of a staging line to even dock. The orders from the Alliance had displaced thousands of trade ships and the like, both alien and human, and all of them needed docking space. By the time they actually secured one of the few Spectre docking berths – none of the Alliance ones would be open for days – it was almost midnight.

Shepard had used the time as constructively as she could, having the ship inventory examined, working on some minor upgrades to Liara's armor in her little omni-foundry, and thinking about what could be done regarding what she'd found on Kyle's hideout. She spent a lot of time talking with Liara, and put the ship on reduced readiness, with a promise of shore leave if they ever got to dock.

She'd also helped Liara work on the Prothean translations some more, and the basics of the translation guide were now completed. Liara had sent it on to both Admiral Vandefar and the University of Arcturus, and had been amused when the University wanted to purchase the rights to republish the thing. Shepard had told them it would cost a million credits, and the money had hit her account less than ten minutes later.

"Shit, should have asked for more."

She commed Mayor Inman to let him know about the money, and spent a few minutes listening to the situation on Intei'sai – which was calm. The only ships nearby were Alliance military vessels, and the hubbub on Earth hardly affected them.

She'd made an attempt to walk around the ship and get a feel for how the crew was doing. Thankfully, no one onboard the Kazan had any relatives or friends in Nova Scotia, but many people were concerned about the lockdown.

Shepard had little to say, but Pressly was a blessing, walking all over the ship and talking with various crew members to calm them and ensure them that things were being handled. Jiong had several open attendance meetings he held in the main mess decks, explaining to the crew exactly what a Commissariat lockdown entailed, and reassuring them that the lockdown would only last a few days. Traynor managed to write up, from scratch, a mass communications program, allowing the crew to send short messages using the ships comm's system to check on their loved ones, and that eased any remaining worries most of them had.

Shepard wrote her a commendation for good thinking, and the young lieutenant blushed with pleasure at her praise.

Rather than stumble around half exhausted at midnight, Shepard went to bed, and woke up early the next morning. She was eating breakfast with Liara when the news display on the far mess bulkhead shifted to a report from ANN saying the lockdown had been lifted, and three additional civilian ships destroyed in orbit over Terra Nova, New Edo and Mindoir – each with the same sort of FTL plot modifications. The ships had attempted to run after being scanned, but didn't get very far.

The calm if aging face of Charles Wong, the so-called 'most trusted face in news', spoke in a grave voice. "Early reports and various extranet sources suggest a human terrorist group was behind the attacks. Calling themselves the Hand of Hades, the group posted on multiple forms of social media using a variety of hacking methods, taking responsibility. They also managed to transmit a short burst transmission that claimed responsibility for the attack said they were punishing those who would side with 'alien filth'. The Commissariat has made no comment on the attack aside from promising justice and retribution."

Shepard sighed tiredly as she finished her eggs. She never could grasp why exactly some humans hated aliens so much. Then again, she realized she wasn't exactly a normal human. Her own fascination with the asari had started when she'd trained by the asari for a short time to learn the dancing kanquess, and had been treated just as a person, not a thing. Their grace and beauty had made Shepard feel clumsy, awkward and ugly, but they'd never acted as if they found her as anything but a fellow warrior.

She'd never interacted with salarians much, and her opinion of turians was split – there were good ones like Garrus and Kuril, and bad ones like Saren and most pirates. But what she didn't ever feel was some need to look down on aliens simply because they were different.

She stood up, squeezing Liara's hand as the asari kept eating, and headed to her quarters to change into her dress whites. She had no clear orders from Fleet Command, but her early morning message to Udina had come back with a request from him to meet in his offices at ten, so she decided to get that out of the way. She had just finished up when Liara came in.

"You are headed into the Citadel? Did you want me to come with you?"

Shepard shook her head. "Nah. Not that I'd mind the company, but who knows if Udina wants to talk to me alone or not. Besides, you can finish up the last bits of work you have to do on the slabs with the translating guide."

Liara smiled. "Actually, I was planning on heading out and buying some more reference texts and software. I still do not see myself as a particularly competent science officer, no matter how much I have picked up in the past few months. Diedre – Chief Scott, that is – has suggested a more complete set of references would be a good baseline for me to start improving from. And in any event, I am beginning to get depressed reading about the last stand of those poor Protheans."

Shepard nodded. "I'll get Jiong to scare us up an aircar, and drop you off at wherever you were headed before I see Udina, then. If we don't take too long, we can catch lunch on the way back."

It took another twenty minutes to get going, but eventually they were on their way, Jiong driving the all-black Commissariat aircar at a fairly sedate pace through the tubeways of the upper wards before entering the shiftway into the Presidium. They dropped Liara off at the 'south' end of the ring and continued toward the Citadel Tower.

Jiong was mostly silent for the ride, leaving Shepard to her own thoughts. Most of those rotated about what to do next, now that the last lead they had on what Ylana had been up to or who she worked for had gone up in biotic fire. She was not sure of why Ylana was working on a communication device, but it seemed to imply that the Reapers may not have been aware of Nazara's demise.

If that was the case, then maybe the galaxy had time to prepare for the coming conflict. Of course, that left out the ugly fact that someone was behind her, and that someone could always find a new puppet to do what they needed. Sooner or later, she figured, they either had to find out who else was involved in this mess, or the Reapers would get a late-night phone call and show up to kill them all.

The aircar touched down on one of the private landing pads near the Tower base, and Shepard stepped out of the aircar. "I don't know how long this will take, Alfred."

The Commissar shrugged, a faint smile crossing his features. "Doctor Sedanya _bullied_ Susan into going to Huerta Memorial for a checkup and cybernetics examination. I'll be there whenever you complete your discussions with the Councilor."

She nodded, and as she walked to the tower the aircar lifted off and ascended. She passed through the reception area, noting security had been beefed up more than a little since the attack by Benezia, and now heavy duty shielding generators were installed to either side of the base of the tower, and a pair of salarian Shieldbreakers painted in C-SEC colors guarded the main entrance.

As usual, the damnable elevator ascended at a rate even slower than the piece of shit on the Normandy, and she wondered exactly who thought such slow elevators were a good idea. Still, she enjoyed the slowly rising view of the Presidium and the Wards spread out in all their glory, before the hull was reached and the window showed only passing metallic spars.

Finding Udina's new office wasn't hard, as it was placed on the same floor as the rest of the Citadel Councilors, and clearly marked. The two X-series guards nearby also helped show her where to go. Upon entering, she smirked. The office was even more spacious than Udina's old embassy office, although she sort of missed the open balcony and the plants.

He sat behind a large curved desk, its surface alight with haptic displays, in a thick leather chair that swiveled to face her as she entered. "Spectre Shepard, reporting."

Udina waved vaguely at the pair of comfortable looking chairs on the other side of the desk. "I'm not a general, Shepard, sit down." She did so, noting the new lines in Udina's face, and the fact that his suit looked a little rumpled, unlike his usually immaculate appearance.

"Is everything alright, sir?"

He snorted, blanking his desk with a motion of his hand. "No, it isn't. And the situation on Earth right now has thrown the entire Alliance into a blasted mess." He blinked tiredly, then rubbed his bloodshot eyes. "I'm running on stimulants and have been for the past twelve hours, so forgive me if I am more abrupt than usual. I may be one of the most powerful humans in space right now, but that doesn't amount of a hill of beans if no one is listening to me."

She nodded slowly. "You said you needed to see me …"

He nodded briskly. "Yes. As you know, with this Ylana woman so utterly destroyed, the Council has no real leads on what she may have been trying to do. The decision was made to step up exploration of the areas near the Perseus Veil, to find any additional sources of geth activity. Hopefully, the geth may have been involved with her in some capacity – the fact they were actually on the world she was would seem to support that."

He folded his arms. "Barely six hours into the search, reports came in from the D'starkan Verge, an area of space not far from the Perseus Veil. It's a major trade lane used by Aria's people to ship eezo into the Hegemony and to the various outlying warlords in the Traverse, and thus is heavily patrolled by Aria's people."

He tapped a panel on the desk, bringing up some kind of report. "Quarian scouts found signs of a battle, and stumbled across several wrecked pirate ships. Then they were attacked by a force of geth ships, but drove them off, albeit with heavy losses."

Shepard frowned. "What was Aria's response to this?"

Udina grimaced. "So far...to pull her ships back. Tevos and Valern are worried that Aria may be trying to avoid the area, and to have us clean up the mess for her. Thin'Koris, on the other hand, felt the number of geth ships was high for so few pirate losses, and is beginning to suggest Aria may be working for or with the geth."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "That seems unlikely. I think the quarians are kinda irrational when it comes to the geth, sir."

Udina nodded sourly. "That is certainly true, Shepard. It is an _outrage_, how often that man derails every conversation and discussion to some how segue into the threat of the geth. Not that they aren't a threat, but … " He exhaled. "In any event, while this was occurring, Spectre Vasir made the decision to go investigate the region on her own. Why she chose to do this – without authorization – isn't clear, but it's the sort of action she seems to take quite often."

He folded his arms. "It was implied she had some sort of lead – possibly from her contacts with the Shadow Broker."

Shepard nodded. She still wasn't sure about the Broker and what he was after, but the fact that Shields said he didn't want to start any shit with Shepard – and that he'd put a bullet into Okeer – made her consider him at least potentially an ally. If he was actually helping locate geth, then that was a good sign he wasn't out to screw them all over. "Go on, sir."

He tapped his desk, bringing up a haptic map. "Vasir's ship was heavily engaged here, deep in Aria's territory, six jumps from the edge of the Veil. She's limping back to Citadel Space now, her ship severely damaged and having suffered heavy casualties to her crew, but she was able to get partial sensor readings from this region of space. It looks like the geth have some kind of fleet anchorage here, outside of the Veil. From what she was able to see, it looked like it was still under construction."

Shepard grimaced. "That means they're rebuilding faster than we thought."

Udina nodded. "Unfortunately, it's very deep within Aria's claimed territory, although this area is only lightly trafficked. Sparatus wanted to send in a strike force to destroy the anchorage before it gets up and running, but without hard proof it exists – or what system it is in – the rest of the Council shot that idea down. What we need is hard and clear evidence of the geth presence, so the Council can tell Aria and we have a way to go in after it without starting some intergalactic pissing contest."

Shepard folded her arms. "Sounds like a mess."

Udina smiled thinly. "Yes. High Admiral Branson was consulted early this morning, and his suggestion was one I'd thought of myself. We can't afford to get caught scouting the region, and the quarians are not really equipped to be sneaky. Aria's people are starting to treat them more and more like belligerents, so we need a stealth option to look at the region. Branson suggested sending in the Normandy."

Shepard raised both eyebrows. "Oh? Well. He does have a brain after all."

Udina snorted. "Doubtful. Someone probably suggested the idea to him. The man is a talking head, Shepard, and when a _politician_ feels that way about someone, it says something. The problem with sending in the Normandy is that if the ship somehow gets caught, Aria's people won't hesitate to destroy it either."

Shepard smiled. "Unless blowing it up had larger consequences...like killing a Spectre."

Udina nodded. "That was Branson's opinion, and I concur. There's nothing we can do with Battlegroup Chiron at the moment, given half of it is still in repairs at Arcturus while the Kazan is here. And with the President incapacitated, the Fleet can't give you orders anyway."

Shepard folded her arms. "So you want me to take command of the Normandy and check this mess out?"

Udina nodded. "It's a bit of a wild goose chase, I suppose, but we have no other real leads. And you are the most experienced person we have access to when it comes to dealing with geth. If we can get additional details of what to expect when the main fleet goes into the Perseus Veil, it would be very useful. And frankly, the only reason I can see for the geth building a fleet anchorage at this place is that they plan to begin assaulting Aria's people."

He sighed again. "Normally I would be all for that, but we can't let the geth siege Omega and take control of the eezo mines there. Nor would Aria's destruction lead to stability in the Traverse – P. would likely take full control, and he's much more hostile to the Council than Aria is."

She shrugged. "I've got nothing else to do. And it would be nice to see the old gang again. I presume I can bring some of my people from the Kazan?"

Udina cleared his desk of graphics again, folding his hands on its glossy surface. "Details are up to you. For this mission, Branson has assigned the Normandy as a Council asset. The crew are still aboard, but the ship has no First Officer, no medical officer, no engineer and no weapons officer. Given Ms. Zorah's experience with the geth and the Normandy, I would expect you to at least bring her along."

Shepard nodded. "I'll bring Tali, Doctor Sedanya, Pressly and Liara then. Colms, my weapons officer, can come along as well. What about marines?"

Udina gave her a hard look. "Hopefully, Shepard, you won't need any. Then again, knowing how you operate, that's probably a foolish hope on my part. If you wish to bring along part of your marine contingent, that's up to you."

She smiled. "I can do subtle, sir, on occasion. I'll try not to set of any more shit-storms."

Udina smiled weakly. "I'll believe that when I see it. Anything else?"

Shepard thought. "The Normandy was pretty banged up when I brought her in last, and when I asked about having her transferred to my fleet I got noise about her repairs not being done or tested or something like that. Is she up to the trip?"

Udina nodded. "For the most part. All repairs were completed, but she hasn't undergone a shakedown cruise or detailed inspection. On the other hand, the ship has been upgraded with a very thin layer of Silaris armor plating and more powerful shielding, as well as new ECM gear. Additional cooling tanks were fitted in some places to extend your stealth endurance as well."

She nodded. "Do I have any specific goals or targets?"

Udina shook his head. "We'll forward you Vasir's sensor logs and findings, and what the quarians found, but the bottom line is that you're going to be looking for a needle in a haystack here. Be very careful, Shepard. You'll be outnumbered heavily if Aria or the geth find you, and while Aria's people will probably hesitate to blow up a Spectre, the geth won't."

Shepard snorted. "Shit, even the damned Reaper couldn't see us when we were stealthed, Udina. We'll be fine. I'll find this anchorage, get enough footage that even Aria won't squawk if we go in after it, and we can go blow it up." She smiled. "That should give you some good news and help calm everyone down."

He sighed. "It would be a nice change of pace from unending chaos and disaster after disaster, Shepard." He folded his hands together. "Just try not to get horribly killed. As irritating as you are, I have no time to break in another Spectre and God only knows who they would pick."

She stood, smiling. "With your luck, probably Valerie Kyle."

He grimaced. "Yes, that would be my luck. Dismissed, begone, whatever it is you military types like to hear when a conversation is over."

She laughed and left the office.

_Normandy, here I come._


	35. Chapter 35 : A dream ends in fire

**A/N:**

_Someone asked if ATTWN ends here. It does not._

_Reviews are always welcome, positive or negative._

* * *

_"The first time? Yeah, that was bad. The second time was worse, but shit, I'd already bitchslapped Death out of my way once already."  
_

_– Sara Shepard, "Lay It On Me"  
_

* * *

The Normandy gleamed under the hot lights of the docking bay, sporting a new blue and black paint-job that somehow made the ship look more menacing and elegant than before. The silvery hull had been repaired until it shone with a mirror finish, and the four engines completely replaced with slightly longer engines with more thrust modules.

Joker was already aboard, giggling manically to himself as he updated the piloting computers, and Tali was buried in engineering, cursing in Khellish as she made slight adjustments to the core and fuel systems. Sedanya had sniffed at the tiny medical bay and openly wondered how in the hell Shepard's people had lived through the battles with Saren and Benezia with such limited medical facilities.

Shepard herself spent the morning dealing with paperwork, and then headed out to the Citadel to purchase a civilian brand coffee maker and some decent coffee. Upon returning to the ship, she had the engineers install the new one, then gathered the crew to the cargo bay, where she proceeded to empty her ODIN into the old, horrific device passing as a coffee maker to the cheers of the crew.

When Pressly, amused, had questioned her actions, she shrugged. "Pressly, that damned thing was a bio-hazard. If I had the time I'd set fire to that fucking elevator, too, but I'm not going off into deep space with a coffee machine that produces sludge not fit to feed to a vorcha. We're spacing the wreckage out of the airlock once we get out of the Widow Nebula and then shooting it with the main guns."

Pressly had walked off laughing, but more than one crewman stopped to kick the smoking wreckage of the coffee machine. Shepard had been pleased to see both Haskins and Ownby, two of her former Marines, were healed from their wounds and back on duty, as well as several other Marines she'd worried would be discharged. Even Chief Hahn had returned, although he now sported a cybernetic leg and some artificial organs, smiling as he greeted her.

Shepard had eventually gone back to her cabin, to pack a few things in the thin shelving under the bed.

She'd forgotten how much she missed this ship, despite the fact she adored the Kazan, and smiled at the memory of her very first bonding with Liara.

The door chimed, and she turned. "Come in."

It slid open to reveal the stolid figure of David Anderson, his uniform now bearing the augmented gold bars of a commodore. "Thought I'd bring a gift to see you off with, Sara." He held up a bottle of brandy and she laughed.

She crossed the short space to hug him, and he smiled as he returned it, setting down the bottle before doing so. "I see you're still in one piece."

She nodded. "I am. I...things are good."

He sat down on the tiny couch in the corner, opening the bottle and pulling out a pair of plastic cups from the locker under the seat. "Tell me about it, then. You're not going anywhere for another two or three hours, until they clear the flight lanes."

She did, telling him about her honeymoon, her experiences on Intei'sai, and her trips since then. She talked about how she felt overwhelmed sometimes, and about Liara, and about anything that popped in her mind. It was less of a conversation and more venting, and Anderson's face kept the calm smile he usually wore as he listened carefully, only interjecting a few times.

When she finished, they'd gone through two glasses of brandy each, and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he sat back. "Sounds like an eventful month or two. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself for the most part, although I have to admit I think you're worrying too much."

She tilted her head. "How so?"

Anderson smiled. "Sara, you've barely been in this situation any time at all. Two years ago you were under Delacor, miserable and cracking. I know you want to change who you are … but things will take time. For now, just focus on living. Enjoy yourself. If you worry about this situation with Liara – which I admit I don't fully understand – trust yourself and her to work on it over time."

Shepard shrugged. "I worry if I do that I'll just let it slip because I'm so happy most of the time."

Anderson laughed quietly. "Nothing wrong with that, child. You've had enough bad things happen to you all your life – you just have to get used to the idea of good things happening in long streaks now as well. I'm sure your Commissars probably have a point – I vividly remember the one assigned to me when I was in command of the Tokyo prodding me to fix my situation with Kahlee – but it doesn't mean it has to happen right now."

Shepard nodded, playing with her empty glass. She had given a lot of thought to talking to Anderson about what Kyle had found out, and wasn't sure yet if she wanted to or not. But she had to say something. "David...one thing that is bothering me is some of what I found out when I was investigating Cerberus. A lot of the details were unclear, but it sounded like they were just the front of something worse."

Anderson's eyes flickered with some emotion, and he nodded. "It's...possible." He gave a sigh. "The ugly truth is that for a long, long time, Cerberus was tied up in black projects definitely backed by the Alliance, and some of those projects were extremely ugly. The people behind the ones I was involved in – REACHBACK, in JANUS – were always careful to try and keep us away from the more unethical stuff, but we still heard rumors."

He looked up at her. "I knew Rachel, way before you came into the picture. Hell, I fought with her and Ahern and Kyle on Earth, when we were trying out for the original N-series placements. She was heavily involved in a lot of those black projects, and I have no idea what the hell else she could have gotten up to."

Shepard nodded. "It's more than that though." She exhaled. "I...I trust you a lot, David. You're the only person who has been there for me for … God, half my life. But what I've learned is heavy enough – dangerous enough – that I'm not sure I want to get you involved in it."

Anderson looked at her a long moment, and then poured himself another glass of brandy. "Then don't share it. I've heard some ugly things floating around, from people who hear certain things. The AIS is looking into you, Shepard, and questions are being asked about what Kyle could have said to you when you saw him before his … well, his suicide."

Shepard shrugged. "I turned over what I had to Admiral Chu and the Commissars."

He nodded. "And that's not the problem. The problem is that it looks like Kyle may have penetrated some pretty secure databases, and people are nervous that highly classified information may have gotten out."

Shepard snorted. "Yeah. I can say that's the case. By 'classified' they mean fucking disgusting information, like the bullshit they were doing to L2's."

Anderson winced. "I can't speak to that. I won't cover for the bad things the Alliance has done, but I will say that you actually have the influence to change things for the better."

She nodded. "I guess. What is happening is bad, David." She wanted to tell him, but wasn't sure how he would take it – and as much as it hurt, Ahern's warning about forcing him to pick sides rang in her head.

Anderson leaned back. "Sara, no matter how bad it is, try to keep in mind one thing. Most of the more morally challenging things the SA came up with were due to us finding out equally bad things of our alien counterparts. I don't think anyone wants to do these kind of acts, and if you can expose them without getting yourself killed then maybe that is a starting point to scaling them back."

Shepard shrugged. "Some of this is so big I'm not sure I can expose it without the Citadel taking a very dim view of humanity. Maybe with good reason."

Anderson finished his drink, standing. "Then after this little jaunt, we'll talk about it. If it is that bad, Sara...you shouldn't have to carry the weight of it alone."

She smiled. "I'll do that. You...take care of yourself. Please."

He nodded, smiling gently. "You do the same, Major-Commander. And please be careful out there."

She stood, hugging him again. "I will. Tell Kahlee I want burgers again when I get back."

He chuckled, and after a long moment, left. She sat down at her desk, thinking about the conversation she'd just had. Anderson had hinted at knowing at least something about what she had found out about, which wasn't exactly comforting. And the idea that the AIS was interested in her was also more than a little alarming.

There wasn't much she could do about any of that now, however. She checked the tiny status panel above her desk to see the ship's readiness, then walked out of her quarters, heading up to the cockpit.

Joker was fiddling with his haptic displays as she walked up, and he turned his chair to face her. "Sup, Shepard?"

She shrugged. "Back here again, dashing off into the darkness, going to beat up some more bad guys. Seems like yesterday we were stealing her from dock."

Joker pulled down the brim of his cap. "I'm still pissed you didn't let me fly a pirate flag. I had a haptic package all ready and everything!"

She had been reaching for the 1MC but paused. "And just why, exactly, did you have a pirate flag ready to go?"

He shrugged. "I figured sooner or later the Council would do something stupid and you'd tell them to fuck themselves. I was gonna fly it when you did that, but you were always too much of a goody-two-shoes to tell them off."

She choked back laughter, shaking her head. "I don't think Dread Pirate Shepard has any kind of convincing ring to it at all. Especially without me having an eye-patch or something."

She lifted the mike, clearing her throat. "Hello again, boys and girls of the Normandy. Did you miss me?"

She laughed as the techs in ops alley cheered, and smiled as she spoke. "Well, good. Missed you too. The Kazan is a wonderful ship, but this is still my first baby."

"Our orders are simple – and familiar. We've killed off all the pointy-faced bastards and I had to detour to blow up yet another crazy asari lady, but the geth are still doing shit in the fringe of the Traverse. The Council sent in a ship to scout and they got their asses beat, so we're going in sneaky."

She paused. "My orders are pretty clear – this is only a scouting trip. We can't take out an entire geth fleet solo, no matter how badass we are, although in case things get dicey I did bring along a party favor from the Kazan. Our goal is to scout and identify a geth anchorage, and get out with the information so the Council can send a fleet to stomp them flat."

She hardened her voice. "Things on Earth are a mess right now, but we need to focus on what we can do to improve the situation. Our fleets need time to get themselves back up to speed, and if we stop the geth here, that gives us more time to get ready."

"Everyone is already on board, so we're ready to space this bitch. All hands, set standard watch rotation. By orders of the Systems Alliance Admiralty and the Citadel Council, in my capacity as Council Spectre, I hereby take provisional command of the SCV Normandy. I have the deck and the conn. VI, log the time." She clicked off, and turned to Joker again.

"When you're ready, disconnect fueling lines, Flight Commander."

"Yes, ma'am." His hands flew across the keyboard, eyes flickering. "Ops, bring us up to fifty percent power on the mains. Tali, full power to the core. Transferring all flight control surfaces to my station. My board shows green, Major. Permission to undock?"

She nodded. "Permission granted."

The Normandy slowly backed away from the mooring slip even as the fueling arm was swinging back and away from the connection point, the circular mag-clamps releasing the ship and maneuvering thrusters glowing faintly as she backed out. A moment later, the nose of the ship dipped and the entire vessel fell away from the docks, tumbling into a spin before straightening. The engines flared and the gases of the nebula swirled in circular patterns as she flew into the distance.

Observing with a pair of electronic binoculars, a nondescript looking male salarian in a black jumpsuit tapped his omni-tool. "They are moving. Kicking off the signal now."

In the cargo bay of the Normandy, behind a sheet of durasteel internal paneling, the few segments of the Shadow Broker's communication device Wrex had installed so long ago came to life. Most of it had been removed when the ship had been turned back over to the Alliance by Wrex himself, but some of it remained wired into the ship's ODN network. A repair order to remove it had been changed by the Broker's agents to instead connect a few new pieces and hide the entire thing behind a durasteel panel.

Now those components came on. First, complicated software burst transmitted into the Normandy's status computers, instantly blinding the VI to what was happening. A second program carved frequency exceptions into the ship's sensor profiles, making it impossible for them to realize they were actively transmitting a signal.

The final piece kicked off a very-low frequency transmission using a highly encrypted signal. The signal was bounced off of several internal subsystems also clandestinely modified during the long drydock period the Normandy had been under, which routed the signal as if it was a regular component of the ship's traffic.

This all took only a second, and the omni-tool on the salarian's arm gave a small bing sound as the signal reached it. He smiled thinly, speaking again. "Signal is active."

The voice of Tetrimus sounded in his ear. "Excellent work. Report back to the ship as soon as you liquidate the workers who performed the modifications."

The salarian sighed. "_Already_ done, Ginnister Tetrimus. Two were killed in muggings I set up, the last died of a red sand overdose. I already swept their apartments and message systems for any hint they knew what they were doing. I've also cleaned up the altered order so it appears the devices were removed as intended. I even went to the trouble of reporting the piece of hull material we used to cover the device up with as installed elsewhere in the ship. It might look a little fishy if examined...but those orders should purge from the system in seventy two hours anyway."

Tetrimus chuckled. "Very good work, indeed. In that case, take a day or two to relax and then head back. A ship will pick you up from the Kithoi Ward docks, slip 442, in two days."

**O-ATTWN-O**

The trip to the lawless region of the Traverse known as the D'starkan Verge was mostly mind-numbingly boring.

Unlike the wide bridge windows of the Kazan, the Normandy's only windows were tiny portholes in a few places and the cockpit views. And the only thing to look at was the frightening, dark mass of the Perseus Veil, a blot of midnight blackness among the stars.

The three days it took to begin their search she mostly spent reading and going over Vasir's sensor reports. She had to admit the asari Spectre had a hell of a spine – she'd gathered the data while dodging heavy fire from no less than a dozen heavy geth cruisers, managed to shoot her way past a blockage of geth frigates by loading her pinnace with torpedoes and ramming them with it, and barely escaped alive.

The sensor logs themselves were more boring but also more disturbing – Vasir had not been able to be sure which of almost a dozen systems the geth were coming from, but found evidence of geth bases on three separate worlds, and geth transmissions from six more. Aria had already dismissed the reports as 'Council propaganda' and warned against sending ships into the region – but she was probably more worried about the Council blocking or stealing her eezo shipments rather than the geth, who had only attacked her ships a handful of times so far.

The data was full of weird holes in places – but given Vasir was running her ass of when she gathered it, that wasn't too odd in Shepard's opinion.

Shepard wasn't sure this trip would go as smoothly as she liked, which is why she'd had Colms rig up a standard torpedo casing with a Kyle-class torpedo warhead. The thing required some rework of the existing tube housing, which Tali had finished the day before, but if they did get caught it would hopefully buy them an opening to escape with.

The upgrades to the engines were nice, but the thin layer of Silaris armor was the main thing Shepard liked. While only half an inch thick, it was more durable than six inches of standard Alliance armor plating, and heavily resistant to radiation as well. Of course, the coating probably cost more than the entire Normandy did, but she liked the gesture from the asari Republic all the same.

Liara was busy programming carefully stealthed drones in the tiny science lab, while Sedanya was building additional medical dockets in the cargo bay. Given they didn't expect landing and had only one MAKO on board, Shepard found that to be a good idea in case anything went wrong.

She finished reviewing the sensor logs and put in the course adjustments she wanted made into the ship's computer, before coming Joker. "Course change, Jeff. Bring us around to the list of systems I just put into the flight systems, maximum stealth. Between each one, fall back to Misacage, as that system is clear of any activity and we can drop charge in the gas giant there."

Joker was silent for several seconds as he plotted courses, then whistled. "Going to be cutting it close in the Amada system on heat endurance, ma'am."

She nodded. "Yeah, I know. Still that last system has an ice planet, Alchera. If we don't find anything else out here, we can drop charge there and dump the waste heat as well. Place is an icy hellhole, but it should guarantee no one see us."

Joker hummed agreement and clicked off, and Shepard rubbed her eyes tiredly. This wasn't a very exciting search so far.

**O-ATTWN-O**

A week of tedium passed.

Shepard's day fitted into a small, easy pattern. Workouts and breakfast, reading until lunch, working with Tali on making some adjustments to the MAKO until dinner, showing a movie on the mess decks for the crew to watch, and then bed. Shepard had brought along her sound-suppressors for her cabin so she and Liara didn't bother anyone, and Liara was going from enthusiastic to kinky in the bedroom, something Shepard found herself not really minding that much.

Of course, it meant the mornings were full of soreness and badly bruised up muscles and the occasional gouge from fingernails,but that was a small price to pay.

Shepard was dressed in pressed fatigues, sipping wonderful civilian coffee from a mug as she sat in the cockpit next to Joker. Pressly was slouched in the main gunnery station, shaking his head as he watched al-Jiliani make all kinds of ridiculous assertions on her stupid news program.

Shepard clucked. "You're gonna rot your brain watching that tramp, Charles."

He snorted. "Maybe, but I like to know what is going on in the heads of the crazies back home, ma'am. I may end up voting Alliance Blue this time around...the party I used to support has become too crazy for me to back any more."

She sipped her coffee again. It really was very good. "I'm still surprised you're just chilling out up here, watching the news. I'm used to you stalking the deck , barking orders."

Pressly sighed. "This is a wild goose chase if I ever saw one. I'm sure Vasir had some kind of hits, but we haven't found a single sign of geth activity out here. It's not like I need to be alert to anything except Joker slipping his porn into the mess deck display."

Joker sniffed. "How was I supposed to know Liara and Tali would see it?"

Shepard gently bopped him on the head. "_Idiot_." She chuckled. "I must admit I never heard Tali stammer that much before. Trying to give her ideas for when we get back to the Kazan?"

Pressly snickered, and Joker slunk deeper into his seat. "Great. Burned by my own practical joke."

She just kept drinking her coffee and laughed.

Joker adjusted course as the ship cruised slowly through the Amada system, currently scanning in all directions. The ship shifted bearings as Joker brought it closer to the ice planet of Alchera. "Back to what Pressly was saying...Vasir had to have seen something. You think the geth just pulled up stakes and left in a few days?"

Pressly shook his head. "No, but they may have been driven out. My money's on slavers, or Aria's bandits. We can't go active or get close to any heat sources, so we may have passed right over a ruined geth base and not even seen the wreckage. I can't see her just ignoring the geth threat."

Shepard smirked, draining her cup, then tapped the comms panel. "Anything, Liara?"

The asari's voice was quiet. "No, Sara. No sign of geth activity at all. One of the drones picked up some kind of … particle traces a few minutes ago, but nothing even remotely like the geth."

Shepard shrugged. "Joker, take us to Alchera and vent heat, then drop charge. Once you're done, signal me and we'll get ready to head back to the relay. Council is going to be pissed."

Joker smiled. "And this is different from how they normally act how, exactly?"

She picked up her cup, cutting her eyes at him. "I usually have to do something right for them to bitch at me. Maybe this time they'll be happy that I failed?"

She didn't wait for his answer, heading down ops alley and the stairs to the mess-decks. She washed her cup out in the tiny sink forward of the food processor, pausing a moment to think of how Kaiden always used to mess with the panel next to it.

Shaking her head, she decided to give Ashley a call. She walked into her quarters from the mess decks, sitting down in the chair. She was about to fire up the comm system when the repeater console above her desk lit up. "Pressly here, ma'am. We have a contact incoming."

She could hear Joker talking to someone else in the background – one of the ops techs. Shepard sat up straight. "Identification?"

Joker's voice was suddenly tense. "None yet, ma'am. Some kind of cruiser – possibly heavy cruiser. Coming in with the sun's glare, sensors can't quite make it out."

She frowned. A single geth heavy would be a nasty thing in a fight, but they were hardly in danger. Still, dumping heat when something was in-system was stupid. "Halt progress towards Alchera and kill the engines."

The voice of the ops tech sounded."Aspect change...course change, Commander. Target is now headed right for us."

Pressly's voice was dubious. "Can't be. We're in full stealth, even the damned geth couldn't see us."

Shepard stood up from her chair, and was about to say something when Joker's voice sounded again, this time full of dread. "It's not the geth." A moment later he yelled. "Brace for evasive!"

The ops tech's voice sounded. "Incoming fire – "

Shepard reeled and was flung against the wall as something slammed into the ship, sending the Normandy careening drunkenly through space. Her repeater panel exploded into sparks, and alarms blared all over the ship.

Pressly's voice sounded a moment later. "All hands! Abandon ship! The core is down and we have a hull breach in the CIC!"

Shepard's eyes widened as she lunged for her armor locker, tearing off her fatigues as she did so. Through long practice it only took her a minute to get her armor on, but those sixty seconds were punctuated by several more blasts and shaking. She could smell smoke, filtering in from the venting system, and finally slapped her omni when she got her armor on. "Pressly, report!"

She heard Joker's voice faintly. "Shepard...hit. Pressly down. Knocked out of my chair...can't...help."

She exhaled and put her helmet on, triggering her omni. "All hands, this is the captain. Abandon ship. Do _not_ attempt to enter the CIC."

She left her quarters at a run. The mess decks were smoldering, small fires flaring here and there, and Liara was supporting Doctor Sedanya as they left the med bay. The asari doctor had a long bloody gash on her thigh, sealed with medigel, and Liara had bruises on her face.

"Sara!"

Shepard motioned her to the escape pod entries on either side of the stairs. "I have to get the emergency beacon off, and get up to the cockpit. Get the crew out of here, Liara!"

Liara bit her lip. "Joker and Pressly – "

She nodded. "I know, I'm going to get them and we'll punch out using the cockpit pod. But I need to know you're safe – and you can use your biotics to get people clear of wreckage."

Liara's jaw tightened. "Sara, I'm _not_ leaving you."

Shepard punched the beacon control panel, and the ship shook as the two devices punched out from the lower hull. She turned to face Liara squarely, pointing again. "Li, if you don't get the shit out of here right now, I won't be able to focus."

Liara's eyes swam with tears as she gently touched Shepard's armored shoulder. "Just..._please_ hurry and be careful."

She nodded, and Liara helped Sedanya away. Shepard glanced around, seeing two dead sailors near the stairs, then began moving up them.

The stairway itself was on fire, the small hatches of the officer quarters on the outer walls ajar from the shaking of the ship. She lurched as another blast rocked the Normandy, and could hear the VI speaking. "A-a-a-alert-t-t-t. Ship integrity at 34% and falling. Secondary engines non-responsive. Core is non responsive. Shields non-responsive."

She punched the panel to the CIC, the doors flying open with a rush of atmosphere, and Shepard gaped at the sight. The entire overhead of the CIC was simply gone, torn open in a gory splash of melted metal. Most of her ops techs were dead in their chairs, and she had no doubts the missing ones had been sucked into space to die.

The galaxy map was melted, flickering in bits and bobs of random colors, and wreckage and debris tumbled in all directions. She pushed through it, her mag-clamps on her boots engaging, and grimaced as the flash-frozen splashes of blood on the now-dark haptic panels.

Ahead she saw the shimmering blue force-screen – emergency barriers, to keep atmosphere in the cockpit. The single escape pod door was also inside that barrier, and she pushed forward again.

She felt the ship shudder as escape pods began punching out, and she stepped through the curtain. Joker was on the ground, pinned there by a broken piece of overhead that had torn into his leg, which bleed freely. Pressly had been tossed by some explosion, and he was unconscious, covered in burns from a smoldering panel.

Joker's eyes were wide with fear. "I – I managed to get the fire out...can't move."

She nodded. "Stay still, Jeff." She triggered her biotics, carefully lifting and extracting the heavy metal beam from the position it was in. Joker winced as she removed it and more blood spurted from his leg, but a moment later she slapped a medigel patch on it and hoisted him to his feet.

"Come on, we gotta get out of here."

Joker sighed. "Weapons are out, but the torpedo tubes still have power – can't we fire back?"

She shook her head, using her biotics to lift Pressly. "No point – they have us dead bang whoever they are. How in fuck did they detect us?"

She slammed the pod control pad, opening the door, and lurched inside, first depositing Joker, then Pressly.

The VI chimed. "Al-llll-ert. All escape pods away. Ship integrity at 14%. One escape pod has been destroyed by incoming fire."

Shepard stopped dead. "What?" She hustled out of the pod, ignoring Joker's yelling, and headed back to the cockpit command panel.

The escape pods were waiting until the final pod was launched to engage their limited FTL capacities. The battered sensors, barely working, showed that the ship which had savaged the Normandy had stopped firing on her and had opened fire on a pod, blasting it to fragments.

The ship was familiar somehow, but she had no time to try and figure out where she saw it. She tapped controls rapidly. "VI, launch the last pod and engage all FTL drives on all pods, my authorization."

The VI's synthetic voice stammered an acknowledgment, even as Joker screamed. "Shepard, what the fuck are you _doing_!?"

Shepard gave him a last look, and keyed her omni. "Take care of Tali, Joker." She pressed the pod door controls and the pod sealed, launching a moment later.

She sat down at Joker's seat. "VI, transfer all flight and weapons controls to this console. Activate comms." She steeled herself.

"All escape pods, this is Major-Commander Shepard. Strap in now. Our attacker just blew up a pod, the rest are going to hit FTL in a few more minutes. I'll draw the enemy ship away so you can get the shit out of here. Tell Alliance Command...this wasn't the geth."

Even before she was done transmitting, the huge alien ship began to turn again, back towards the Normandy. Shepard smiled savagely.

"Come on, you gruesome son of a bitch. You wanna get nuts, let's get _nuts_."

She tapped the controls for the thrusters, moving the Normandy into a tumbling arc that drew them away from the pods. She checked her power levels – the engines were barely responsive and life support had gone down, but she had enough battery power to launch one torpedo and keep the thrusters going.

That would have to be good enough.

A flashing signal on the panel indicated an incoming call, and she felt her heart sink as she knew who it was. She pressed it nonetheless. "Shepard here."

Liara's voice was frantic and full of fear and pain. "Sara, do not do this."

Shepard exhaled as the the alien vessel came towards her, and the VI announced one minute until the pod's FTL drives would engage. "No choices, marazul." She felt her eyes swim with tears at the agony she felt across the link, and pushed more power into the thrusters. "I'm going to make sure I'm far enough away from you I don't take you with me when I did. I want you to live."

Liara's scream tore at her heart, and between the sobs, she heard her speaking. "How am I supposed to live with my soul gone?"

Shepard closed her eyes. "It's either I die, or everyone dies. I can't … sacrifice God knows how many people just on the off chance they don't shoot up my pod or yours. I can't."

Liara only cried, and after a moment gave a sobbing gasp. Doctor Sedanya's voice sounded, grim and hard. "I have given her a sedative, Major. I will use what skills I can to try and … stabilize her from any backlash from your death, but I cannot make any promises."

Shepard nodded, biting her lip. She tapped in the commands to the torpedo. "Tell her...God ...tell her I'm so sorry."

Sedanya's voice trembled. "Goddess keep you and preserve you, Sara Shepard."

Shepard fired the torpedo, even as a golden blast of light snapped out from the strange ship now in view. She had time to smile as she saw the torpedo curve and achieve lock before the bolt struck the Normandy squarely.

The world exploded into agony worse than anything she'd ever felt , and the ship spun crazily. She felt something burning through her arm, and realized the hit had burned a hole through part of the cockpit. Molten hot metal splashed her as she ship was struck again, the core detonating in a violent purple explosion.

Something shoved her forward, and she screamed and choked on her own blood as her chest rammed into the instrumentation panels. Her ribs shattered, hot spears of agony tearing through her lungs, as another blast hit the ship. She felt blazing agony on her left side and then nothing, and saw a burned, severed arm floating away through the shattered holes where the windows once were.

Her reeling brain realized it was her own arm. A crazed thought tittered through her head. _Well, that's not very handy._

Something hot was on her neckline, and she heard escaping gas, even as her lungs filled with blood, her legs were smashed and her body caught fire. The last thought she had was of Liara, naked and lit with the purple luminescence of the Window Nebula, before a final thundering blast ended her forever.

The Normandy, shattered and broken, tumbled and came apart as it hit the atmosphere, even as the last Kyle class torpedo detonated squarely in the face of the alien ship that killed it. It reared, as if in agony, as it had arrogantly assumed no single torpedo could do much damage. Shards of rock and flaring metal expanded in a cloud as the mortally wounded ship staggered aside. The cockpit broke away and tumbled down in a cloud of debris, as the rest of the ship detonated violently a few moments later.

Unable to fire the main gun any longer, the commander of the vessel was unable to destroy the remaining life pods, and could only watch as each one winked out into FTL burst flights. But as the Normandy fell into the atmosphere of Alchera, smoking and melting, breaking apart further, it realized there was no need to eliminate them.

It, too, turned away and left. And all that was left was burning bright trails of light against the darkness of Achera's continents. A single flare of light flashed, and then all went dark.

**O-ATTWN-O**

High Admiral Branson was busy reviewing budget figures when his comms tech gave a gasp. He glanced up in irritation. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

The blond woman licked her lips carefully before speaking. "Incoming action message...the Normandy has engaged its onboard distress beacon with a code of 'Under fire, abandoning ship.' "

Branson stood, an icy feeling crawling along his spine. The quiet suggestion from Minister Saracino had seemed harmless the day before, a way to keep Shepard from causing any more trouble for a few weeks. Now, questions would be asked, and he had no answers. "Verify the message. Get the Commissariat and Fifth Fleet on the line. Send a message to the Council to get rescue ships out that way immediately!"

The comm tech and her two assistance looked shocked, and he roared. "NOW!"

**O-ATTWN-O**

On Dirth, a little girl was playing in the fountain park surrounding the Eternal Flame the people had lit, in memory of Shepard driving back the piratical forces that endangered their lives. She was six and loved the fountains, but also liked staring at the pale white fire sometimes.

Her mommy had explained that Shepard had saved them all from bad men who would have taken Mommy and Daddy away. She didn't really understand it all, but she'd seen pictures of Shepard – strong, pretty and tough – and said she wanted to grow up to be like her.

Her parents had laughed, but she still liked to play in the park. She was staring at the flame when a gust of wind kicked up, making it dance and flicker back and forth.

She was about to turn away from it, her mind more focused on her toys, when a nearby power transformer blew out. The power supplying the Eternal Flame cut out, and the wind extinguished the fire. Wisps of smoke blew in the wind for a moment before vanishing, and the girl stared at the missing flame.

It had blown out before but always relit itself, and she waited for that to happen now.

It didn't. For some reason, that made the little girl upset. She sniffled, and went to find mommy, pointing at the now darkened plinth.

Her mother swallowed, and put in a call to the techs to fix the transformer and relight the flame. But a part of her mind wondered if that was a bad sign. When the news hit the colony later in the day, the transformer was still being fixed, and the flame was still out.

The story that would spread was that it had failed the moment of her death, but no one was sure.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Liara awoke with the worse headache she could ever remember having. It was so bad it felt as if someone had literally struck her in the skull with several hammers, and it made her vision swim. She felt nauseous, like she wanted to purge her stomach, and her eyes were swollen and sore.

She blinked as she glanced around, finding herself in a hospital bed. The walls were pure calming blue, the door very heavy steel, and she realized after a moment part of the pain she was in was due to a powerful pulse suppression field in the room.

Her memories were hazy...she remembered making love to Sara, and then … probes...and...

With sudden, horrible clarity, it came back to her. The realization her soul was now incomplete. Sara was dead.

Her face crumpled in misery as she tried not to just scream, the tears trailing down her features. She didn't know how long she laid there. Crying, eyes shut tight, the pounding in her head getting worse and worse until she was sure she would go mad.

She found herself strapped to the bed, but didn't care. She didn't care about anything. Every memory she had was bubbling up now, warped and filled with agony and loss. Every one of Sara's smile, so rare, a mocking knife in her heart at what she had lost.

To never feel her warm skin again? Smell the scent of her hair, or get lost in the storm blue of her eyes? To never hear that laugh, so full of confidence, or the gentle sound of her breathing at night?

Better to die.

She wasn't even aware of when her father had entered her room until a presence touched her mind, fingers stroking her forehead.

"I'm here, Little Wing. Goddess, I'm so fucking sorry."

With a few motions, Aethyta undid the bindings on her daughter's wrists, and felt Liara fling her arms around her, sobbing harder than before. She gently held her child, jaw tight with anger and her own sorrow, and did what she could to take and absorb the endless agony her daughter was suffering.

Sedanya had done what she could. Between being unconscious and biotically suppressed, and keeping her knocked out for two whole days under more suppression, she had managed to prevent any kind of backlash from affecting Liara as a result of Shepard's death. But that didn't mean Liara would ever recover from this mentally or emotionally.

Aethyta had already called the few people she knew to try and get help, but few gave her any positive answers. The High Solarch was sending someone, and the Alliance would send asari specialists from Watson, but no one knew what the outcome would be.

All the ancient matriarch could do was hold onto Liara and let her cry.

**O-ATTWN-O**

On the burning sands of the Mtha Wastes of Tuchanka, Urdnot Wrex crushed the data-padd in his hands, heedless as it cut his flesh. Shattered electronics tinkered to the ground, with drops of orange blood following.

Behind him, Jackson had a slack, unbelieving look on his windburned features, his pale blue eyes wide with shock.

In the glittering towers of the Presidium, Garrus stared at the haptic screen in his apartment, mandibles quivering, while Telanya's hand had flown to her mouth, tears in her eyes. The droning voice of Emily Wong, normally so full of cheer, was dead and flat today, as she announced the death of Sara Ying Shepard.

Garrus bowed his head, and clenched his fist, shaking with fury. Someone would pay for this.

On the shores of Thessia, Uressa T'Shora lit a single candle of sea-wax, carefully placing it on a sea-lily pad, and pushed it away from the shore, uttering a short prayer to Athame for a soul that burned so bright and fierce in the short span of Shepard's life.

The Council of Matriarchs had considered the matter a minor news item, but Matriarch Sulasia looked devastated, and Uressa found herself sad. Shepard had been such an interesting, different sort of person – and young Liara was unlikely to recover from such an ugly, heavy blow this early on in her life.

Still, live was for the living, not the dead, and the lives of humans were often like a wave, upon the beach only a moment before they were gone.

On the sunny cliff-side expanse of beach the Illusive Man was at, he stood on the breakwater, staring out to the sea, the message on his omni-tool bleak and direct. He had admired Shepard as much as he thought she wasted her potential, and now that she was gone, some of the plans he had in the long term were simply unworkable.

Without a Spectre to penetrate the government, he knew he was unlikely to survive matching wits or forces with the Manswells, let alone any other noble house. Still, there were moves to be made, and no time to waste on regrets when it was time to do business.

In the Silversun Strip, Kahlee Sanders looked worriedly at the slumped figure of David Anderson, now on the recliner. His hands were bandaged from where he'd smashed a fist into his screen and then half the bottles in the bar in rage over the news, and then he'd broken down crying, kneeling on the floor in a puddle of booze and tears.

It had taken a good hour to get him calmed down, cleaned up, and resting, and she was worried at how he'd act when he woke up. Sara had been very important to him, and she was never very good at consoling people's grief.

On Earth, in an apartment given to officer candidates outside Annapolis, Ashley Williams resolutely wiped away tears from her cheeks as she forced herself to watch the news stations. It pissed her off the fucking Alliance was too goddamned cowardly to even go back into the area and get her body, and she could only be thankful that, from what little they knew, Shepard had probably died instantly.

"Skipper...damn it, if anyone deserved a better end than this, it was you." She pounded a fist weakly on the chair she sat in, wiping her eyes again.

In a different hospital from Liara's on the Citadel, Chanson Pressly looked at the unresponsive form of his father, laying in a medical bed covered in life support machinery. The hard-faced doctor standing next to the bed answered his question.

"I don't know, Mr. Pressly. Your father took a very hard blow to the skull, and his spine was broken. While modern medical science can sometimes correct these things, it took over a full day to recover the escape pods – that delay means he was in critical condition,untreated, for a very long time. He could wake up tomorrow...or not at all. And even if he does, he may not be able to walk. Or see."

The young man buried his face in his hands, his wife rubbing his shoulders gently. Their arguments seemed so stupid now, and she was going to stick with him no matter how rough things got.

In the depths of ice cold space, Warden Kuril read the brief message from the news services before snarling in anger and flinging the padd against the wall hard enough to break. His assistant, a slender asari female, took a step back, and Kuril tried hard to master his temper and speak normally.

"Find out if Aria's people did this. Find out now. If they did, I don't care what it costs me, that bitch is going to die by my own fucking talons. I swear on the ancestors."

In the depths of the Alliance Command building on the Citadel, an exhausted Jeff Moreau stared at the Commissar in front of him.

"For fucks sake, don't you think if I saw anything I'd tell you! We had a sensor reading, it was cruiser or heavy cruiser class, and it wasn't like any geth I ever saw! It never got in visual fucking range of my shitty view from the cockpit and the escape pods don't have goddamned windows. We saw NOTHING."

Commandant Viterel glanced at his associate. "Remain calm, or we will calm you, citizen. What you are describing – an unknown alien vessel somehow managing to destroy a stealth ship it had no way of detecting – is impossible. Either someone sabotaged the Normandy or someone transmitted its position!"

In a different room, Tali folded her arms and glared at the Commissar she faced. "No, I don't know what happened. I took a log dump before I left for my escape pod and gave it to you."

The commissar folded her arms. "Yes, and the VI recorded that the stealth system was fully engaged and no transmission were sent. What I am asking is if there was any way the system could be fooled to think stealth was engaged and it wasn't."

Tali sat back. "No. Not that I knew a lot about the IES system – but from what little I was told, the internal heat sinks would have physically changed colors when the system shut down. They were still glowing hot when I passed them on the way to the escape pods in the cargo bay."

In a bar on the lower wards of the Citadel, Jason Dunn drank until he passed out. In a cell deep inside the Black Zone's single orbital station, Balak heard the guards gossiping and smiled in amusement. Aboard the quarian Flotilla, Admiral Rael'Zorah clicked off from the message he'd gotten from his daughter and wondered if this was going to bring Tali home...or drive her further into the human Alliance.

On a hundred worlds, in a hundred ways, people reacted to the passing of Sara Shepard. Pirates celebrated. Blue Stars No More threw a party, which was crashed by Alliance Blue, and resulted in a riot and six murders. The hanar put out a statement that Shepard's tampering with the Beacon had drawn a curse on her head, and the quarians threatened to mine their systems to dust if they didn't retract such an offensive statement. A Westerlund reporter asked Udina if he had already lined up a replacement, and the question infuriated him so much he punched the man out on live telecast.

The Six Dalatrasses of the Salarian Union castigated the STG master when he said he had no idea who could have destroyed the Normandy. The Primarch listened carefully to the few details the Deathwatch could give him and sent a message of solidarity and regret to the human Prime Minister.

In his offices, Charles Saracino pulled out a pistol and stared at it. He wondered if he'd be linked to this mess or not.

The extranet came up with a thousand theories of how she could have been found and killed, but none of them made sense. The combined Council faced an enraged and still badly wounded President Windsor, screaming from his hospital bed that he'd barely awoken from hours earlier, that if Shepard's killer wasn't found the Alliance would start killing geth and Aria's people as soon as they could get ships into the Traverse.

From Omega, Aria made the rare gesture of transmitting an open message, saying she had nothing at all to do with the Spectre's demise, and would pay well for information on who was behind it. P. transmitted a segment of his P's Truth, suggesting the Alliance itself probably had her killed for some obscure reason, along with a line about how she didn't fit in very well with the 'new men' of the New Coleman administration.

Maxwell Manswell sat in his mansion, his head pounding. Someone had subverted a cell of Hades without he or Richard being aware of it, used it to nearly kill half of House Windsor, then managed to cover their tracks. Then someone had taken out Shepard, in a stealth ship that couldn't be picked up, and again left not a single clue as to their identity. And now P. was taunting them with knowledge that spiked bastard shouldn't have.

Events had gotten out of hand, and Maxwell couldn't think of how to get things back on track.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Beatrice Shields glanced around her now empty apartment one last time.

She was probably going to be dead in the next ten or eleven hours, and almost certainly by the end of the week. But what she had stumbled on was so sickening she couldn't justify not going through with it.

She'd never, ever fully trusted the Broker, and that had only increased when Tetrimus made coy hints about maybe killing Shepard. She wasn't blind to the fact that someone paid big money to have her killed, and if they could do it once, they could do it again.

And the Broker Network did not turn down money.

She'd told Jase about it, after a night of drinking and reminiscing with Jackson and Dunn which ended up, despite what she'd said, with Dunn in her bed after all. He was even better than she remembered, and some of his asshole nature had been muted in Cerberus or over the years, because he was actually worried about her.

He'd given her some programs to run on the Broker's data nets – 'written by a buddy of mine' as he put it – and she'd been monitoring the take. It was risky, spying on the Broker, but the one perk of her position was that everyone thought she was just good with a gun, not with tech.

As if an evil-ass company like Exogeni wouldn't train her on that. Sometimes the Broker's people were so badass their arrogance blinded them.

Until a few days back, the trawl had turned up nothing she hadn't expected – until she'd caught a conversation between a salarian dock worker and a data hacker on the Citadel, to alter some orders affecting the Normandy.

At the time, it seemed harmless. After the disaster, she did some digging – and found a carefully concealed edit to the repair order system done barely a day before the Normandy took off. It was set to purge in a few more hours after she had found it, and as she dug she realized someone – on the Broker's orders – had installed something into the Normandy and taken great pains to make sure it wasn't found.

She didn't have any proof that would stand up in any kind of court … but she had a gut instinct, and with no other possible culprits to blame, the Broker was the most likely source. The message she'd gotten late last night had broken any doubts she had.

It wasn't enough to kill She-bitch, no. P's little fucking scavengers had gotten to the wreck of the Normandy that the Alliance was too chickenshit to secure, and found Shepard's body. They were in the process of sealing it into a stasis container, and then they planned to sell the corpse to God knows who.

The Broker had already put in a huge bid to buy it from them. Shields didn't know why, but she did know letting them have her old friend's body wasn't something she could stand by and watch.

She'd scrubbed her trawl, packaged the data, cleaned out her apartment, and turned her cash into hard volus plated gold strips.

Dunn was supposed to send someone to pick her up in a few minutes, and she would share what she had found out. It wouldn't take long for her absence from Barla Von Financial to be noticed, but she knew it was only a matter of time until someone in the Network got around to finding out about her snooping anyway.

Better to run now, when it wasn't expected, than try to run from Tazzik or Tetrimus.

She jumped as someone knocked on the door. Lifting her backpack and checking her pistol, she carefully opened it.

The man who stood there was slightly shorter than her, with Asiatic features. He wore black sunglasses and a business suit, and carried a long, straight cane with a silver handle in the shape of a snarling dog's head.

She shook her head. "Subtle."

His voice was a raspy whisper. "My employer is a melodramatic fool. You are prepared to leave?"

She nodded and he stepped back. "We have an aircar, and it goes directly to the docks. You say you have critical information for us?"

Shields nodded. "I think the Broker set up and was responsible for Shepard being killed, and even now P is recovering her corpse and plans to sell it to the Broker. And the Broker put out a bid on it, with a message to Tetrimus and Tazzik about recovering the body."

She exhaled. "For the _Collectors_."

The man nodded slowly, and gestured. "Then we need to move quickly. Follow and keep silent."

**O-ATTWN-O**

It had been three days.

Three days since her world had shattered, since life became some kind of melting collage of pointless faces, memories that smeared together, and pain.

Liara sat listlessly in the small room, on a comfortable couch in the apartment Councilor Udina had set aside for her on the Citadel. Her mother brought her food, but she had no appetite. The doctors at the hospital wanted to keep her for observation, but Aethyta had overridden them.

Across from her, David Anderson sat grimly, his eyes red and swollen from crying. "They...they are planning on having a funeral tomorrow, Liara. They...Admiral Branson...asked if you wanted to be there."

Liara's eyes closed. "She is not going to be in whatever box they display."

He nodded. "I know. God, I'm so angry about that … but no one is willing to go tearing off into the Traverse to try to salvage the wreck. The hope is none of Aria's people stumble across it until she finally backs down and gives us access to the region...but even if that happened, it..."

He trailed off. Liara found herself nodding anyway. "I know, David. There is not much of a chance her body survived in any event." She felt a fresh surge of tears coming and ground her teeth together.

The anger in her head was the only thing keeping her from going to pieces. It was as if a piece of Shepard was still in her. She could almost see her, standing with her arms folded, one leg bearing her weight, head tilted just enough to let her glorious black hair fall into her face.

_You going to let them get away with killing my ass, marazul? Stop fucking crying and start fucking killing!_

She swallowed. Delusional visions of Shepard weren't going to make her feel much better. She coughed and sighed. "I … I do not want to be at such an event, David. I do not know what I could do or say in such a time … Goddess..."

She slumped further. "I sat here for an hour staring at the gun she made me, wondering if she would hate me if I shot myself. I thought of how much it would hurt my aithntar, to find me like that, and I could not do it. But I am..."

She trailed off again. "I am lost."

David nodded slowly. "I understand. God knows if anyone needs to be able to find some stability in this damnable horror show it's you, Liara." He firmed his jaw. "But I need you to be there. There's a sense of outrage at her death, and if you can stoke it at that funeral, we might convince the damned Fleet to go in and at least recover her body."

She looked up at that, eyes rimmed with tears. "It will not bring her back, and the only thing I can think of worse than her dying is to look upon her broken body and realize once and for all she is g-gone forever..."

He stood, placing a heavy, comforting hand on her shoulder. "I know, Liara. But the alternative is worse. Sooner or later, some pirate or slaver will find the wreck."

He didn't continue, and Liara wiped tears from her cheeks. Her eyes were swollen and painful from endless crying, and her stomach hurt with hunger cramps. Her whole body felt broken and weak, and the idea of standing in front of endless staring human gazes...

She swallowed. In her mind, Shepard smirked. _You're stronger than this, love. Don't make David go to this media circus alone, because you just fucking know goddamned al-Jiliani will be there. Kick her in the face for me._

Despite herself, she felt the barest ghost of a smile cross her face. "I will try, David. I will try."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Of all the duties a Commissar had to perform, the one Alfred Jiong was about to do was perhaps the worst. He carefully adjusted his dress coat, checking his sword and the knots of his sash, before placing his cap on his head and taking a deep, heavy breath.

The pulsing calming sensations of his conditioning were like faint ghosts today. He should have been on that ship with her. He could have sacrificed himself in her place. But he was fool enough to let her go off on her own, convinced such a trip would be harmless, and would give him enough time to further work on studying the bond Shepard and Liara had.

"Fool. You have a clear schedule now, don't you?" He glanced as his image in the mirror and exited the restroom, coming out into the bare white corridor that held the beginning of the procession.

Human military funerals had been one of the few things that had not changed much in the time since the Days of Iron. They were never sure if they got all the details right – but they had tried to keep up those traditions, and that had culminated in the spectacle he now beheld.

The six black horses, each heavily muscled, stood calmly in front of the night-black coach, the deep blues and white of the Alliance flag draped over the oblong black box in the carriage.

It was, of course, raining at Arlington Memorial. It was almost unfair that the body of Shepard would never return home to Earth, but at least they could honor her here. With a final exhalation, he spoke in calm tones to the driver.

"Advance."

The wide doors of the tunnel opened, revealing a long line of mourners on either side of the bricked path leading to the burial site. The Alliance had thoughtfully put up omni-shield generators to block the rainfall, but as the carriage proceeded down the avenue, he saw many people stood beyond their coverage.

Standing in the rain, staring as the six horses walked by, the carriage, and the one horse behind, with an empty pair of boots tied to the stirrups.

The long, sad tones of Chopin's Funeral March echoed in slow time across the damp air, as the endless rows of white markers slowly filed past Jiong's view. Some were American soldiers and sailors, others were Heer, Guard of Iron, Solguard, Alliance Marines – all mixed now, in death, in glory.

He heard crying, an older woman he realized with a faint shock was Chakwas, averting her gaze from the carriage, and tightened his jaw until he feared his teeth would be ground to powder. Commissars did not feel pain. They did not suffer.

They did not cry. Never had he been gladder for the rain, this day, that cascaded down his hard features.

The procession went by, in stately slow movements, as Alliance fighters tore through the sky, splitting into a diamond shape formation that was clearly missing a plane, before shooting high into the vault of the storm-filled skies.

He saw Susan standing next to Liara, ahead, and the gaping, awful pit that would hold an empty box, a gesture of nothingness to a woman who had given everything she had, everything she could have been, to a government too cowardly even to retrieve her broken body.

He saw the iron-faced visage of the Prime Minster and repressed an urge to storm over to him and sink his dress sword into the man's face. Commissars did not murder government officials, even if they were walking slime.

Speaking of walking slime, he didn't see Saracino in the pack of ministry types. If the man had actually skipped this, he was going to see him thrown into the Black Cells at Alcatraz if he accomplished nothing else in life.

The carriage slowly drew to a halt in front of the burial site, and five figures stepped forward. David Anderson and Tradius Ahern, Jason Dunn and Jason von Grath. The last figure surprised even Jiong, as a concession rarely given – the alien features of Garrus Vakarian, mandibles tight against his jaw.

Jiong joined them, lifting the coffin from its cradle and bearing it towards the freshly dug pit. The smell of wet earth, overturned grass, and something like sulfur reached his nose. Rain soaked through his greatcoat, making his clothing stick.

They let the coffin down carefully, the build-in mass repulsor taking over, casting a faint blue radiance into the pit below. At a single nod from Ahern, the six stepped back as one, and a single war-priest stepped into view.

He was the same burly figure, Jiong realized, who'd married Shepard and Liara. He saw Liara standing to one side, dressed in black, with an asari shawl around her shoulders, her father holding her hand on one side, and oddly enough Ashley Williams the other. Williams lips were moving in silent prayer.

The war-priest gazed out at the vast crowd, at the hovering camera drones, and beyond – to the towering statue of the Christ, agonized upon the Cross, that Victor Manswell had built. His black robes were shorn of armor today, no seals decorating his form, and his voice was darker, harder than at the wedding.

"We are here today, to lay to rest a hero."

The priest's eyes shifted to where the slender form of President Windsor stood, leaning upon a cane, medical package still on his arm and leg, surrounded by Secret Service and Commissars.

"It is an event that we should not have to attend. It is a blackening of hope at an hour when darkness is already upon us, when godless monsters from the depths of hell and space threaten all we hold dear. Sara Shepard was a light against that darkness, one that was snuffed out."

He seemed to swell in size, anger lacing his words. "A funeral is a time for grief ans sorrow, a time to let go of one's sorrow and say goodbye to those no longer with us. This, I am sorry to say, we cannot do. Not as individuals, not as a people, not as citizens of the Alliance."

His voice rose. "Sara Shepard saved the people of Dirth, of Horizon, of Eden Prime. If not for her actions Noveria would be a rachni feeding pit, New Louisiana a grave, and Neo Berlin shattered wreckage. If not for her we would be starving this very moment, or begging on our knees for aid."

He slammed his fist down on the podium in front of the burial pit, hard enough send a crack across its surface. Rain plastered his hair to his skull. "She did not merely die. She sacrificed her life – so that her beloved friends might live, that her crew might live. She threw away glory and everything she had worked so hard to do for one reason only – because it was the right thing to do. No matter what mistakes she may have made in her life – that was always true of Shepard."

"Pity, we as a people cannot follow her lead."

Coleman was looking distinctly upset, Jiong noted with scarcely concealed amusement, while Windsor was nodding, the look in his eyes of cold, burning anger.

The priest exhaled. "I recently married this woman who we honor this day to Lady Liara. I wished them long life and happiness, in the name of our Lord. And now, on this day of grief, I have to turn to this broken widow, who came to our people."

He turned to face Liara, and bowed his head. "And tell her we are too fearful and too weak to even bring home the body of someone who gave everything she had to protect us all. And for that, I am sorry, Lady Liara."

His voice wavered. "I am sorry, and I am angry, and I am ashamed. All I can do is offer you the blessing of the Lord."

He stepped aside, and Liara nodded. Her voice was weak. "I .. have been asked to say something. About my … wife."

The crowd, which had quietly begun to murmur, fell abruptly silent. The only sound was the patter of falling rain, the whicker of horses, and the wind, whistling through the gravestones.

Liara's voice was soft. "I would say only two things. Sara understood her duty, and it was something she never would turn her back on. She is dead because in the end, she felt it was her duty to save the rest of us, in a situation where if she had not, we would have simply died with her. There are times, in my grief, I wish that I had died, along side her."

Liara's voice strengthened. "But I also know she would have hated that. She would have wanted me to live, and as hard as that is, I must try to do so. I did not come here to say that... I came here to say I.. I understand why the Alliance has decided to not recover her body."

Liara's eyes flicked to that of the President, who could not meet her gaze. "She once said that we have to put up with whatever life gives us, good or bad. Life has given me nothing, and taken away almost everything. I do not ask for pity, or sorrow. I do not need expressions of sympathy."

She trembled, fists clenching. "All I ask for is one thing I know she would most certainly approve of. I ask for revenge."

An ugly, rumbling sound came from the gathered crowd. It sounded hungry. It sounded angry. Eyes narrowed and heads nodded, as Liara spoke again.

"She did not die just so the Alliance could get other people killed trying to recover her body, when it may be burned to ashes. She would never want that. But she gave her whole life to trying to prove that she was worth the chance the Alliance gave her. That she was worth the awards."

Liara's eyes filled with tears but she managed to keep speaking. "I do not ask for anything but the satisfaction of knowing she will not simply be forgotten." She opened her mouth as if to say something else, but shook with sobs instead, and Aethyta wrapped her arms around her and lead her away.

The war priest nodded and returned to the podium, but stopped as the battered form of the President approached. His face was filled with pain as he leaned heavily on a cane, and one of his guards was speaking urgently to him.

Windsor ignored him, and kept walking. "I would ask, Father, that I be allowed to speak before you commit her to her reward and rest."

The war priest bowed. "Of course, Your Majesty."

The crowd quieted again, and more camera drones zoomed in, as President Windsor grasped the podium unsteadily. He looked drawn and gaunt, his face still bruised, and under the lights of the drones his eyes could be seen to be bloodshot. Rain soaked his expensive clothing and he shivered, but his voice rang out.

"This is no place and time for political statements. We are not here to make them. We are here to say one thing and one thing only. Major Shepard was our sword arm. She was an inspiration to us all, no matter what flaws or faults some may have found with her."

His eyes narrowed, angry and hard. "And we...I... will not forget. She has been murdered, my fellow citizens. Whether the hands are of the geth, of some other outlaw band, or actors unknown – we will find them and I will have them burnt ALIVE and the ashes spread over her grave before we let this outrage rest."

Angry cheers rang out, and he held up a hand. "We will not bear this vile act to go unpunished. This I swear, upon my name and blood."

He stepped back, and the war priest bowed again. "There will be a reflectory service in the main Chapel in one hour for those who wish to speak of Shepard, and observation after that. Now, let us pray."

Jiong bowed his head as the words of the war priest droned past his ears. He did not move as the words ended, as the coffin slowly sank into the earth, as David Anderson himself, crying, alongside an iron-faced Councilor Udina, filled in the gaping pit.

He didn't move as the rain thickened and fell harder, and the crowd melted away, until only he stood there by the graveside, and across from him stood Liara and her father, under a single umbrella.

Finally he looked up, barely able to meet her gaze. "I am … sorry, Lady Liara. I have failed you utterly."

She shook her head. "You are not to blame for this, Commissar. Sara would not wanted for you to die for her more than anyone else...and I doubt you could have stopped her."

He swallowed his words and nodded. "If … if you need anything, milady. I am … at your disposal."

She didn't nod or acknowledge his words, but her father did, giving him a grim nod and a look that held clear dismissal, and he walked away.

After almost ten minutes, Aethyta carefully gathered Liara into her arms. "C'mon, kiddo. We need to get out of this rain. Earth is full of nasty shit in the air and I don't trust that flimsy field."

Liara only numbly followed, until they reached the still parked aircar that had brought them to the funeral. A single human was standing next to it, dressed in a black suit with a floppy-brimmed hat and dark glasses.

Aethyta frowned. "Yes?"

The voice that spoke jerked Liara out of her reverie. "I was hoping to have a moment of Lady Liara's time." The Illusive Man took off the glasses, blue eyes glowing in the dim lighting. "You see, I think there's _something_ I can tell you about who is responsible for her wife's death."


	36. Chapter 36 : Ten Little Aliens

**A/N:**

_Someone actually said at least now the worst was over. Oh, you poor deluded fools. Didn't you learn from Shepard saying that sort of thing what happens when you do?  
_

_Reviews are always welcome, positive or negative._

* * *

_"I am Omega. The beginning and the end, the source and the sea. Beyond me, there is nothing. Below me, only enemies. Above me...only whoever I'm fucking this week."_

_\- Aria T'Loak, Queen of Omega._

* * *

Aethyta had not gotten to be her age without having a good sense of how to estimate danger.

She didn't know who the odd human with the glowing eyes was, but Liara had followed him back to a much more elaborate aircar and gotten inside. The human, who called himself Jack, had offered them both a drink, and Liara had merely stared at him.

"This is not a time for such things, Mr. Harper." Aethyta had never heard such iron her daughter's voice, and subtly checked that her mono-blade was in easy reach.

Harper merely nodded, pouring himself one inside the richly appointed limousine. "You are of course, correct, Lady Liara." His eyes narrowed. "I will be direct and blunt. The Broker sabotaged the Normandy, installing some kind of tracking or homing beacon into it before she launched. Now that the Normandy has crashed on Alchera, agents working for P. have reached the site – after paying off Aria – and are salvaging the wreck – including Shepard's remains."

He leaned back. "P. plans to sell them to the Broker, who will in turn, according to our source, sell them to the Collectors. This will happen in five days. We haven't discerned the meeting place for certain, but our … inside source says it will almost certainly be on Omega."

Aethyta tensed her jaw. "And exactly what the shit do you expect us to do about it?"

The man named Harper inclined his head to her. "I am not in a position to act on this myself. I only have two or three people I can send, and while they are skilled, that is simply not enough to prevent this incident from happening. The other people I have are, sadly, out of position to respond. My organization was very much reduced not too long ago, you see."

Liara shot him an angry look. "Your associates were _monsters_. Rachel more than the others."

Harper merely nodded again. "You will get no arguments from me on that. However, it is far afield from what I need from you. The technology of the Normandy isn't my concern, Lady Liara. I have reason to suspect the Broker could obtain it elsewhere. But I do not like the concept of Shepard's corpse being given to the Collectors. I've had suspicions about them for some time, and I have reason to believe they may have been connected to Benezia and Saren's activities."

Aethyta interrupted. "So what do you want?"

Harper gave her a thin smile. "I happen to have a very fast vessel in my employ, one nominally registered to a powerful salarian crime lord known as the Shifter – a ship that few in Aria's part of space would fire upon. The ship is swift enough to get to Omega in time to stop the transfer of Shepard's body – and has enough weapons to fight its way out of a bind if it comes to that. And it is docked here, nearby"

He sipped his drink calmly. "What I do not have is a pilot, someone to man the ship, or people to fight off any interfering agents of P or the Broker that will be present."

He turned back to Liara. "You, on the other hand, know an excellent pilot, a very good engineer, and a handful of people who would be able to help pull this off. Namely, Mr. Moreau, Ms. Zorah, Detective Vakarian and his wife...and of course, the deadly Black Blade of the Vasir, your father. Along with a couple of my own people you would have the … muscle … to retrieve Shepard's body and thwart the Broker."

Liara narrowed her eyes. "I am not going to get my friends killed chasing a dead body, Mr. Harper. As hard as it is for me to accept, Sara is _gone_."

Jack gave her a searching gaze, and then leaned forward. "And what if I raised the stakes, Lady Liara?If there was a chance Shepard _wasn't_ gone?"

For no reason she could determine, Aethyta felt a chill in her azure and midnight at his expression and words.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Garrus wiped a hot towel over his plates, wincing as he realized the acidic rain at the funeral had messed up his facial markings. Dropping the towel into the recycler, he stepped out into the main room the restroom connected to.

Three hours after the funeral, Liara T'Soni had urgently commed Garrus and Telanya, asking them to meet her in a somewhat shabby hotel in the post-war town of Arlington. Garrus had been in the process of trying to figure out how much it would cost to get back to the Citadel when the call came in, and something about her voice let him know this was serious.

They'd arrived at the hotel room in question, to find it was a fairly small suite of rooms. Joker and Tali sat nervously on the bed, and Liara's father Aethyta was on the single chair in the corner, sharpening her warp sword. Telanya and he had taken the single couch, and when Liara walked in trailed by a familiar figure, Garrus felt his plates rise.

The asari woman looked terrible, her eyes still red from weeping, her hands shaking, her jaw tight. Her black dress was still damp and wrinkled, clinging to her, and her minimal makeup was smeared. But there was an ugly, hateful light burning in her eyes, one that looked something like Shepard rather than the gentle scientist he remembered from the Normandy.

Behind Liara, the black-armored form of Beatrice Shields looked merely worn and tired. She leaned against the wall as Liara took a few deep breaths.

"The Broker sabotaged the Normandy."

Garrus was on his feet before even realized it. "_What_?"

Liara glanced at him. "He had his people infiltrate the ship and place a homing beacon of some kind on it. Ms. Shields only found out about it after the ship was destroyed. If that was not bad enough, the Broker and P plan to sell Sara's body to the Collectors."

Garrus felt himself growling in outrage. It was bad enough that his friend had been murdered. But to desecrate a body, to deny those who loved her the chance to bury her and see her into the realms beyond so her spirit could be at peace, was beyond outrage.

To actually sell it, like some piece of merchandise...He felt Tel gently tugging his arm to make him sit and did so, but his mandibles were quivering.

Tali spoke, her own voice thick with anger. "What are … what are you doing here then? Why haven't you told the Alliance?"

Shields snorted. "Get real, girl. You think those fucking ass-wipes give two shits? As far as I know, someone inside the SA had to work with the Broker to pull this shit off. I almost got killed getting out of the Citadel after I figured this all out, and the people shooting at me were Alliance soldiers. Bottom line is if you tell the SA I guarantee a hit squad will show up and kill the rest of us off."

Aethyta snorted, but said nothing. Tali glanced uncertainly at the Liara. "Then..._why_ are...we here?"

Liara set her jaw. "I am not going to let them desecrate Sara's body and give it to creatures who may be working with the Reapers. I … I have a very unlikely ally who can get us a ship and some backup, but we need to get to Omega to stop them."

Her voice softened. "It is very dangerous...and Shepard would be the first to say none of you, her closest friends, should risk their lives trying to recover her body. But it is the only chance I have at striking at those who took her from me."

Joker spat. "Fuck that. I don't give a shit if we get blown to shit or not – there is no fucking way I'm going to sit my broken ass here when they blew up my CO and my ship, and let them SELL her to anybody."

Tali looked at Jeff worriedly, then sighed. "If he goes, I go."

Liara glanced at Garrus and Telanya, but the asari merely stared back. "You do not even need to ask, Lady Liara. I … owe Shepard a great deal, as does Garrus. If you need our skills..."

Liara exhaled."There's one complication. The people who are helping us...are Cerberus."

There was absolute silence for several seconds, and then Garrus turned to Telanya. "I'm hearing things, right?"

**O-ATTWN-O**

"Spirits above, the only thing about this that isn't stupid is the ship. I can't believe I'm actually doing this."

Garrus sat down in the seats that lined the cargo bay of the small ship they were getting into, a thin salarian cutter of some kind that was painted pitch black.

Given the attitude of Cerberus towards aliens, Garrus had been surprised at how quickly whoever Liara's contact was had moved, and the amount of alien-friendly gear they had. Within twenty minutes of them agreeing, a heavy air transport vehicle had shown up, taking them to a starport some fifty miles away. On the way, they were fed some survival rations – dextro for Garrus and a prepared slush in a bottle for Tali that had been run through a sterilizer.

Someone had planned this quickly, but thoroughly.

They'd entered a ramshackle looking warehouse, only to find two men in head-to-toe black armor with orange highlights and rack upon rack of weapons and armor. They'd been brusquely instructed to get armored and armed up, and then the two had stepped back.

The armor Garrus wore now was some repainted, refurbished suit of turian make – Clan armor, he figured, with a faint marking where the helmet had been repaired. It was a little loose, but otherwise in excellent shape. He'd picked up a customized Phaeston rifle and a monstrously powerful Devid-IX sniper rifle, which drew nods of approval from the two black-armored Cerberus types.

The two men – one large and strong, the other skinny and graceful – had introduced themselves only briefly, as 'Mr. Theo' and 'Mr. Kai". The one called Theo had a heavy Saber rifle and customized shotgun in his slingpak, while the one called Kai had only a pair of slender, elongated pistols and a single, glimmering mono-edge blade on his back. From the way they moved, Garrus wasn't sure if they were soldiers, cops, assassins or worse.

Tali had augmented her suit with an armored jumpsuit of some kind that made her look more like a male turian, while Joker had been carefully put into a set of light armor that managed to go over the braces on his legs that Tali had repaired. He even had a gun, although he complained he had no real training in shooting it.

Liara was wearing a set of black combat armor and Aethyta had dug out a set of thin armor from one of the racks that had a light yellow hue. "For old times sake." Garrus wasn't sure if he was more amused by the fact she bitched the chest was too tight, or the fact that the matriarch apparently carried her warp-sword in the luggage of wherever she went.

Shields still wore her own armor, but had picked up a heavy machine pistol and a sniper rifle. Telanya had put on a set of riot armor, complete with a helmet, and picked up an ugly looking shotgun and a heavy pistol.

After they'd armed up, the one called Mr. Theo had given them throw-away omni-tools and a stack of credit chits. "We don't have no clue what the shit will be on Omega, so our plan is pretty simple. Go in, bust heads, grab the body, and get the shit out. If we run into problems, well, the chits have enough cash for you to buy a ride out of Omega on your own, assuming you don't get shot, mugged, or pushed into a pit of plasma slurry. Them's the breaks."

The man's armored visage gave no hint to his expression, but somehow Garrus felt he was grinning. "If we run into nasty shit, me and dip-shit here – " he nudged Mr. Kai, who merely snorted – " will handle it. You folks just get the lady's body and get it back to the ship."

The final person to join had been waiting on the ship itself. A human female, with somewhat exaggerated curves and a waist too thick for Garrus to really like met them at the open cargo bay. She wore a tight armored bodysuit, but unlike the other two her face was bare, revealing what Garrus thought were somewhat ugly features.

Her voice was cultured and elegant, if sharp. "We're already behind schedule. Mr. Moreau, can you fly this vessel?"

Joker swaggered past her. "Lady, I can fly _anything_." He stepped into the cockpit, and a moment later, back out. "That is, if you have a damned overlay for all the salarian bullshit on this console."

She gave him a frosty smile with no humor. "Indeed." She touched her omni-tool. "Get us moving, please. Everyone else but Ms. Zorah, please strap in. Ms. Zorah, there is an engineering monitoring station down that ladder-well – we have had little time to test this ship after we … ah , _acquired_ it."

Tali nodded, dropping down the ladder, and Garrus strapped in. Across from him, Liara was shifting her gun back and forth from pistol to shotgun, her jaw clenched. He wondered why she'd brought it to the funeral, and then came up with the obvious and ugly answer. Rather than call her out on that directly, he simply looked at her and spoke. "Liara...are you okay?"

She looked up, and something in her eyes was twisted, torn between some ugly choice he could almost smell on her. Her heart sped up sightly as she smiled. "I'm fine, Garrus."

She was lying, but he didn't call her on it.

The cargo bay doors shut, groaning as they did so, and Garrus glanced over at Telanya. The absurdity of what he was about to do – storm Omega, in a ship owned by Cerberus, to fight the two most dreaded crime syndicates in the galaxy over a dead body – suddenly hit him.

"You know...Shepard would _smack_ us if she knew we were doing this."

Only Aethyta chuckled as the ship lifted off.

**O-ATTWN-O**

General Jason von Grath gently massaged his temples as he sat his desk. He'd rarely used the family lodge on Earth, finding the planet fairly depressing, but it had come in handy when he was planning to run for office, and he'd kept it cleaned up and stocked ever since. He'd retreated here after the funeral, too emotionally exhausted to even think about getting on a ship and heading back to the damned Citadel.

He had things he needed to be about, he knew. Messages from Karin, messages from his father, from the Fleet Admiral. From that blasted fool Branson.

Instead he was focused on the short text message he'd gotten from a man he very much disliked, Jason Dunn. The message was only a few words, but they troubled him.

"If you owe Shepard anything at all, keep anyone in the Alliance from asking why Liara, Tali and Joker are missing for one week. Also Aethyta."

He exhaled. He owed Shepard quite a bit. He thought back to the angry discussion he'd had with Ahern not too long ago, the man's blazing anger at his own lack of vision and foresight when it came to his tormented soldier.

He'd answered confidently and now, he felt, perhaps arrogantly – sure in his belief that Shepard, while certainly having the rough edges you would find on any diamond in the wild, was a tough enough cookie to make it threw whatever the galaxy threw at her. She'd was born to suffering and privation, lived through a hell few could even describe, laughed off being trapped behind enemy lines, fought like six kinds of demon and thought fear was something kind of fruit.

The idea that she could be killed was so ridiculous that when he'd heard the news he almost thought it was some extremely gauche joke. After seeing the funeral – the wreckage left behind by her death, the shattered figure of Doctor T'Soni, he was in a strange place emotionally.

The anger of that crowd echoed inside him. What did the name von Grath mean, if not loyalty to those who had served him more valiantly than any knight.

And thus he cleared his messages – he'd comm Karin later – and responded to the one outstanding Commissariat inquiry from a certain Alfred Jiong.

"Commissar Jiong, General von Grath here. In response to your inquiry, Lady Liara and a few of her close friends are currently staying with me rather than engage some form of hotel on Earth, where they are ill prepared to experience for a first trip. The Lady in particular is extremely distraught...I have an old asari acquaintance who might be able to help her, and her father is here with her to assist in that."

He paused. "If you have a specific message, please let me know. Von Grath out.,"

He leaned back, biting his lip, and then sighed. "The die is cast. I hope that fool Dunn knows what he is doing."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Kasumi Goto sat in the lounge of the rather exclusive lounge in Vancouver, sipping a drink calmly, wearing a little black dress and some nice heels for once. Her hair was down, bangs falling to either side of her face to shield her eyes a little, but she always felt naked without her hood.

She could hardly go out drinking and dancing dressed up like some baka ninja girl, though, so the hood and her other tools were back at her latest hidey-hole, while she chatted up people and worked through the list of hints and clues the Broker had given her on Kejii's killer.

She was relaxing – as much as she could – when the silver bracelet on her arm illuminated with an incoming call, and she touched her ear implant. "Goto!"

The drawling, bass voice of the Broker rumbled in her ear. In her mind, which was often a scary place, she imagined him as a giant bull, grazing on tall grass and flicking his tail back and forth.

Well, he _sounded_ like one.

"Goto. I have a commission for you, if you are available. You have kept track of the recent alerts?"

She had. Beatrice Shields, a level four contact on the Citadel with all kinds of very nasty chop-chop-kill-kill augments, had gone rogue. A cursory investigation showed that she'd trawled the Broker net – somehow without being caught – then wiped her tracks, but not quite well enough.

By the time the liquidation team had arrived she'd gone, but they'd found the nice present she'd left behind, a M/AM antipersonnel mine that maimed two and killed the other six agents. Kasumi was torn between admiration that some gun-toting thug had actually spied on the Network and disdain at her messy exit.

"Yeah, I did. Sounds ugly to me, Ōotoko-sama." The pet name she'd dropped on the Broker literally translated to 'Lord Big Man', a moniker he seemed curiously amused at.

Today he was not amused. "She is believed to have made contact with a man known as Jason Dunn. He is a known element once involved with Cerberus. Your assertion that they thwarted Shepard's assassination on Arcturus was correct...and now we know who our leak was."

She shrugged. "Okay...but why call me?"

The Broker's voice took a slightly softer edge. Which meant it sounded less like trains colliding and more like them merely sliding off a cliff. "My most effective assets are currently deployed on a longer-term mission. With the chaos on Earth, our ability to penetrate and strike is … lessened. You are already, however, deployed on Earth, well within their security net – and one of our operatives trawling the network broadcast of Shepard's funeral managed to catch an image of Mr. Dunn at said funeral."

She nodded. "And where he is, she is?"

The Broker's voice deepened. "Yes. We are aware of your stated preference for gray-work instead of wetwork, Ms. Goto...but in this instance, we have no one else in the area who can act. You are well known at being able to track people down – elimination of the target would be well paid for."

Kasumi's eyes narrowed as she sipped her cocktail. She didn't mind killing, but there was a difference between a fight and shooting someone in the back of the head. One was defense, the other was cold-blooded murder. She was a big enough girl to realize that sometimes eggs got broken and morals wouldn't stop a bullet. But she also knew that she had more than enough regrets already in her life, making more wasn't a good step toward stability or recovery.

And she wasn't stupid, either. She knew, from going over materials in planning the hit on Shepard, that both Beatrice Shields and Jason Dunn were former team-mates of Shepard – who had very recently died in very strange circumstances on a mission she'd heard the Broker command Charles Saracino to get her assigned to.

Kasumi was hardly a patriot. She didn't know a lot of why Kejii was killed or who did it, but she knew it had to do with the ugly facts he'd stumbled across, facts that were dangerous to the Alliance. The fact that Shepard got killed didn't really bother her that much – she didn't know her and didn't care much about her.

But Shepard had saved Neo Berlin, where her parents had raised her after leaving the Home Islands on Earth. It was where she'd met Kejii, where the house they'd planned to raise children in and start an art museum still lay empty, covered in dust-cloths and old tears. She didn't owe Shepard anything, but she felt a little bad at helping to get someone who'd saved her home get blown up.

She thought a bit more. Shields was, unfortunately, a very nasty number in a fight, and given what had been included in the Broker's report on her, waaay more than Kasumi could expect to chew and swallow without choking. If she was in league with Cerberus, that made it more likely that Kasumi-chan would be Headless-Kasumi-chan in short order if she wasn't both careful and lucky.

She sighed. She didn't think she was being monitored but she never took chances – the Commisars could be anywhere, after all. "With sadness, Ōotoko-sama, I'm not very good with dogs. I understand your difficulties, and I'll ask my people to look for your lost dog and the other stray. But getting involved personally would derail what I'm working on now, and it's very important to me."

The Broker growled. "I am not used to hearing no, Ms. Goto."

She inclined her head. "So sorry, but no money is going to fix me if those _dogs_ bite very hard, now is it? And I am not an employee of your company, merely a freelancer."

The Broker was silent for several seconds. "Very well. If you are not inclined to become involved, I will engage...other methods. But understand this, Ms. Goto – I am disinclined to offer your little quest any further assistance without the appropriate remunerations from this point on."

She shrugged. "Understandable. I will be in touch if I hear anything." She disconnected and then dropped her bracelet into her clasp purse.

Ugh. The Broker was so creepy sometimes. She finished her drink and stood, swaying a bit, before eyeing up a hunky fellow at the bar. She didn't see the person she was supposed to find here, and the night was shot anyway, so she might as well have some fun.

She was in mourning, not _dead_, dammit.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Anderson frowned. "What do you mean, you can't get in contact with her? What about Vakarian?"

Jiong sighed, his image looking drawn and tired on the haptic screen in Anderson's rather cheap hotel room outside of Arlington. "General von Grath has said Liara and most of Shepard's friends – which I would assume also includes Mr. Vakarian – are staying at his family lodges here on Earth. I do not know why you were not consulted on this, although I suspect Liara is simply not ready to speak with you. Your importance to Shepard would have had some impact in her own mind, due to their bond."

Anderson sighed. "I understand that. But Shepard named me her executor for some damned reason, and I need to ask someone some kind of questions about the estate."

Jiong gave a bleak smile. "I can probably assist with that, Commodore. I was often involved in her financial matters myself, given her lack of education on such."

Anderson winced at the subtle dig, but knew it was well deserved. "Thank you. I'll … try not to stir anything up, although von Grath better have a damned good explanation for this stunt. The first thing..."

**O-ATTWN-O**

On the icy surface of Alchera, the small band of heavily muffled and armored figures finally cut into the wreck of the Normandy.

Rolan Quarn wished he was anywhere but on this icy spirit-hell, but P had given very explicit orders, and six of his crazy Daughters were her to see those orders carried out. Gesturing with now-numb hands, he gestured. "Get the wreckage cleared forward and aft. Once we're done we'll be setting charges, so make sure you don't block the exits with anything."

The Normandy had come completely apart in the atmosphere, its shattered corpse impacting into an icy glacier near the poles, less than a mile from an ice-choked ocean. Only the forward third of the ship had survived mostly intact – all four engines were mostly gone, and the midships was scattered over a good square kilometer.

Amazingly, some human infantry vehicle had survived the landing, smashed into a spike of ice hard enough to impale it. Quarn sighed and ventured deeper into the still smoldering wreck, triggering his light.

The interior of what looked like some kind of command deck was dark, the walls crumbled in some places, crushed in others. The roof was just gone, filled with slowly constricting ice, and drips of moisture had congealed on the floor in a half frozen mess.

The temperature was beyond merely cold – Alchera got down to almost ninety degrees below zero – and a snowstorm had blanked the area, slowing their recovery. The weak signal that had doomed the Normandy had cut off when it crashed, and P was very interested in just how the Broker had engineered such an elegant kill.

His men dug aft, while he and the Daughters headed forward, the latter using biotics to clear away scrap and debris. The entire cockpit was almost entirely crushed, but he saw that the main supporting beams had buckled, not broken, at the impact. The heat of rentry had softened the metal but also got it hot enough to melt ice, and the impact vaporized enough ice to not smash the cockpit itself completely flat.

The seat next to the pilot's chair was little more than cold, melted metal, and black soot and plasma burn debris covered everything in a fine glittering patina, highlighted by frost. Seated in the pilot's chair, her back clearly broken at an awkward angle, was what was left of the once mighty Shepard.

One of the Daughters made faint gagging noises and even Quarn was grimly impressed. "Spirits of fire, this bitch died _hard_."

Shepard's corpse was missing it's left arm – burned off by something that had fused her battered armor shut – and her left leg had literally been torn from its socket, strips of flesh dangling from the gory frozen fringe of shattered armor. Her chest had been crushed by some hard impact, blood stains dribbling all over her front, and her back had been smashed in by a spar of metal upon impact with the ground.

The helmet was still on her head, but the clear faceplate was completely covered in congealed black blood. He gingerly engaged his scanning devices, running it over the corpse.

As he suspected, frozen fucking solid. First good news he had all day.

"Have the others bring in the stasis capsule. We'll have to cut off her lower leg at the knee to pull her out, and we'll need some warp fields here and here to shave her back out of this pillar thing." He supervised the removal carefully – the Broker and P had both wanted the body as intact as possible, but this tattered thing was so battered that he saw no real point in doing much more than being careful with the torso and head.

When they had the remains laid out in the stasis chamber, he checked the armor more closely. Much of it had splintered or melted – the neck and throat piece was a ruin, the bitch had burned to death while her lungs filled with blood and she ran out of air. He shook his head in wonderment anything was even intact, then carefully disconnected the helmet.

The ruin of a face below the mask was just too gruesome to see. The eyes had ruptured, either from vacuum or over-pressure during the crash, and the mouth and nose had gushed the weird red blood humans had before she'd died, staining her ugly alien features a dark crimson. The jaw was smashed in at an angle, and strange bits of bone-like things fell out of the mouth to tinkle on the floor. It took him a moment to realize they were human teeth.

He tossed the helmet aside, and nodded. "Cut off the rest of the armor, then seal her up and let's get moving." He stepped back as the Daughters went to work, and strode back through the ruin towards the back of the wreck, where his salarian security chief waited. "You find anything?"

The salarian shook his head, his expression hidden by the thick faceplate of his survival suit. "No. The entire ship is smashed to bits – we found about ten feet of Silaris armor that wasn't ruined and we can salvage though, that should fetch a damned good price. Whatever device the Broker used to break the ship's stealth is either vapor or buried under ten feet of wreckage in one of nine piles – or in the damned ocean."

The salarian folded his arms. "We are in the processing of cutting out the remains of the computer core and the nav comp, and we think we found something else neat." He held up a battered, dog-eared notebook. Quarn flipped through it, finding page after page of innovative weapon designs.

He grinned. "Good work." He tossed it into the stasis pod, letting it land where one of Shepard's legs would have gone. "Plant the charges aft and forward – and the scraps of her armor we took off, toss those in with the helmet. Make it look like she burned to ashes or some shit. Don't have to be perfect, it will be the thaw season by the time the monkeys come looking."

The salarian nodded, and Quarn tapped his commlink. "Boss, job's about done. We found her alright. Bitch looks like she got gang-banged by ten krogan, but it's definitely her."

The voice that answered him was turian, but yet not turian. It didn't flange,and the sound of it was enough to make Quarn's fringe fall and his spurs relax. "Good work, my dear friend. Such a delightful thing to find our lovely new friend isn't all bits and pieces after all. Did you find any evidence of skulduggery or anything else to suggest our overweight ally in the shadows was involved?"

He clicked his teeth in irritation. "No, boss. We looked, but we didn't find anything. We did find a book of drawings – gun designs, it looks like. Might be useful. And some Silaris armor plating, and the comps from the Normandy."

P gave a breathy laugh. "Guns, guns guns. I love guns. A nice bonus for me, and so for you a nice bonus as well. Get the lovely fried cargo to Omega as soon as you can. The quicker we hand this over to the Broker and get paid, the quicker I can find out how exactly he plans to sell it to the Collectors."

P laughed again. "And have your people and my baby-girls ready to move – if the payment is interesting enough, we may have to take it for ourselves. We might even take Shepard's body back and sell that two or three more times too. Or maybe just put it in my collection. I have a dead Prothean and a dead Inusannon, a dead Krogan and a dead Rachni – why not a dead Spectre?"

Quarn just let his boss ramble. Crazy as someone trying to fuck a vakar, but still effective. "Whatever you say, boss. We'll be moving in about an hour and twenty minutes and on the Citadel in four days. Have shit ready to go when we get there."

P trilled more laughter. "Oh, I always have the party ready to go, little Rolan. Leave it _all_ to me" He clicked off, and Quarn sighed, turning to find one of the Daughters behind him.

"Your dad is fucking crazy, you know that?"

The asari smiled. "Well of course. Sane never helped _anybody_."

Quarn just sighed.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Three days in a tiny ship with only basic facilities and sharing it with a pack of racist assholes was not exactly Joker's idea of a good time.

The ship had a very tiny galley (which had been carefully stacked with the most repulsive survival rations he'd ever tasted , in both dextro and levo flavors), a small row of sleeping pods (none of which had hibernation features) and giant fucking engines.

On the one hand, the ship handled like a dream. The seat was sinfully comfortable, the controls responded to everything with a master's precision, and the sensors were chillingly good. He would hate to fight the salarian navy if they had sensors like this on all their ships.

When it came to other creature comforts, though, there was nothing. The two creepy Cerber-goons mostly bickered with one another, which to Joker's amusement was a constant source of hilarity. Tali fiddled with the engines and spent time in the cockpit talking to him when she found the time. Liara sat cross-legged on the decking, eyes closed, radiating anger and sorrow, while Aethyta talked to her now and then, leaving her alone at other times.

Garrus and Telanya tried talking to her as well, but Liara was very angry and almost snappish. She couldn't or wouldn't explain why, but more than once she had whispered, angry conversations with the woman calling herself Miranda, done in a questioning tone.

For her part, the woman named Miranda mostly typed things in on a omni-tool or worked on a portable terminal in her lap. She was researching medical things, eyes narrowed in intense concentration, the text scrolling past at a speed Joker couldn't even follow the few times he'd looked.

He had no idea what was happening, but he really wanted a sonic shower and some real food soon.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Liara sat trying vainly to mediate once again.

She couldn't forget the words that the Illusive Man had spoken in that limousine, the smell of old earth and rain still in her nostrils.

"There is a possibility – slight, but there – that Shepard may have been exposed to vacuum rapidly enough that her Spectre armor's stasis system may have kicked in. It is a very slim chance that she could be revived...but my people tell me it's not totally impossible. It depends on how much damage she took during the crash – or if she didn't get immolated by it."

Her mind had fixated on that one idea and wouldn't let it go. She could still be alive.

In her mind, that was the only reason the Broker – or anyone else – would be interested in her body. Harper was too good with words and mind games to figure out what his angle was, but she knew her aithntar had much more experience reading people.

When he'd done, Aethyta had touched her wrist, the flicker of a memory of Benezia speaking flitting across her mind. She didn't know the context, but her mother spoke a single sentence. "Despite what it sounds like, Aethyta – I think he is telling the truth".

She nodded to herself, and smiled grimly. The message was enough for her to take a chance.

The sheer organization – and stealth – of how they'd gotten from the funeral to deep space let her know one thing – Cerberus may have lost most of its people but they were still dangerous. She didn't need Shepard's memories to feel the biotic power pouring off the woman named Miranda, or see the lethal grace of the slender Mr. Kai, whoever he was.

Her aithntar was sure the man was a lethal swordsman – a very high complement from her. The other one looked and acted like a thug, but Liara somehow doubted a man like Jack Harper would bother employ common thugs for any reason.

She'd been told Miranda was studying the potential methods of resuscitating Shepard and had questioned her several times on the process, only to be basically told it was too complicated for her to understand. Spectre armor contained several life-support functions that Shepard had never bothered to read up much on – ways to nullify biotics being the only one she'd really studied.

According to Miranda, in severe stress and when the suit detected a breach in zero atmosphere, it would attempt to cocoon the Spectre in a generated stasis field. Like all stasis fields, if it took too much external damage it would break, but the fact that Shepard was in the cockpit when she died meant that some of the shock-support systems installed should have aided in the crash landing. The cockpit had taken no direct hits as far as Liara could remember – if it had been able to survive re-entry through Alchera's fairly thin atmosphere and didn't land in the icy oceans, it could survive the impact stress of a crash, although Shepard would be critically wounded when the stasis field was broken.

It meant that they had to act very quickly to stabilize her and get her to medical attention as soon as possible, which was why one small room in the ship was stuffed with medical and life support equipment and Miranda was studying as much as she could on how to stabilize a badly wounded patient.

When Liara had asked why they didn't bring a doctor along, the human woman's answer was curt. "Saving her life may require more … extreme methods. Experimental cybernetics. Certain … technologies Cerberus has access to. A doctor that we could trust not to object to our methods is not one we could trust to keep secrets."

Liara had nearly exploded. "What about Chakwas? Or Sedanya!?"

Miranda merely gave her a cool look. "You clearly do not understand, Doctor T'Soni. This operation is risky enough with you all along. No one will miss Ms. Shields, and both Detective Vakarian and Offier Telanya are not expected back to duty for several days. But sooner or later, someone will notice you, Mr. Moreau, and Ms. Zorah are missing. Every additional Alliance member we bring along raises that risk."

Liara folded her arms. "And without a doctor Sara could die!"

Miranda sighed. "I see Mr. Harper did not explain everything. There is a very high chance that someone within the SA was involved in the destruction of the Normandy. You are well aware of what Shepard uncovered in working with Major Kyle before his death. There is more, and more disturbing information, that she had not found, and people within the Alliance – "

Liara cut her off, paling. "We … found out. About... NOVENSILES."

Miranda had gone stiff for a second, then a grim smile crossed her features. "Then you understand what is really at stake. If people high in the SA got her ship blown up...we can't afford them to realize she might be alive."

Liara had slunk back to meditate after that, a storm of emotions warring in her head. Hope. Fear. Desperate pain and longing, mixed with an almost irrational anger at those who had stolen her love from her.

Shepard's anger, she knew, burning inside her very soul. Before this, she'd suppressed it, feared it. Now she welcomed it, let it light her very blood on fire and stoked its flames. If Sara was alive somehow, she would save her.

And if she wasn't, she would make the Broker, P, and anyone else responsible pay, and pay, and _pay_.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Tali sat numbly in the small engineering monitoring bay, her thoughts in turmoil. The engines were powerful but finicky, the entire ship's power and fuel systems were a mess, and whoever designed the computers was clearly higher than a kite when he or she programmed them, as they needed constant babying and monitoring.

It kept her busy, but didn't require a lot of critical thinking, leaving her far too much time to figure out what to do with her own life.

She'd been happy to follow Shepard – to take a bit of time, for once, for herself. Her leave period had given her a great deal to think about, after she finally broke through Kiala's protective anger and aggression and found a desperately sad and lonely woman worried her own race would cost the man she loved his job or even his life.

The two weeks on leave had opened her eyes to what Joker had to be dealing with as well, as she remembered the almost painfully awkward dinner with his parents. They'd been bewildered and a little hurt, but put on the best face they could and made an honest effort to be accepting and positive about his choice.

She'd almost felt ashamed to be a quarian that night, until Jeff's mother had talked to her, venting her worries about her crippled, brave son. "I am not a really flexible person. I don't know much of anything about quarians. I don't know if you are good for him or not. But you care. Just...take care of him, please. He needs that more than anything else – not for someone to do things for him, but just to care about him."

The future had seemed so clear not that long ago. She'd learn and figure out more and more about human technology. She'd tell her father off, and live with Jeff. Maybe on Arcturus. The people were so nice there. A little girl had called her reik pretty and everyone was honestly polite. She could imagine becoming honored in human society for who she was, not who her father was.

And then the Normandy had been blown out of the sky, and she was sitting in a pod for a full day not knowing if Jeff was alive or dead. She'd found him in the hospital, shaking and bloody but alive, and managed to calm him down as he kept blaming himself for her dying.

It wasn't his fault. It wasn't like he'd chosen to be pinned by wreckage, and he wasn't able to move. Shepard had sacrificed her life so they could all live, but the ugly matter of her death and what it meant for Tali's plans were what filled her head now.

She could, she supposed, stay in the Alliance. She had no idea who else but Shepard would want a young quarian engineer, but she could do it. What she couldn't see happening is being assigned to the same ship as Joker ended up on. Then again, the Alliance might not even want her as an officer anymore, given the conflict it would cause with the Flotilla.

She could go back to the Flotilla. Jeff, she thought, would almost certainly go with her. But that wasn't much of an answer either. She had nothing to offer as a gift, although her father wouldn't care about that. But he would be beyond furious when he found out about Jeff, and there wasn't any telling how he might react. And by quarian law, regardless of age, until she returned from Pilgrimage she was technically a child – she couldn't defy him in the Flotilla and have any standing.

She couldn't see herself and Jeff striking out on their own, either. They had little money – most of it had gone into Jeff's braces – and she doubted the results would end up well.

She focused on the fuel flows, unhappy. She'd talked over things with Jeff but he had no more ideas than she had, and had sourly noted maybe they could work for Ahern. That idea might work, but she had no idea if Ahern would agree or not.

She wasn't even sure if they would survive this trip. Her anger at Shepard's brutal death and the Alliance not recovering her body had cooled, and now she was more than a little scared. The hard motions of the Cerberus soldiers in the cargo bay spoke of their experience, but she'd never forgotten Wrex's stories of how deadly Tetrimus and the other Broker people were. And all she knew of P. were basically horror stories, full of bad jokes and bloody endings.

She monitored the engines and worried.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Garrus found his thoughts curiously scattered.

One part of him was angry at the loss of his friend. Another part was slowly coming to realize that the rest of them could very well be killed in this stunt. Still another part of him was questioning why he was here.

He should have taken the information Shields had revealed back to C-SEC. The Alliance may have been infiltrated by traitors, but surely the Council would act on the knowledge that the Broker had killed one of their Spectres.

Except, as Telanya had pointed out in a quiet conversation, they had no proof. Whatever information Shields had, it was clearly something from within the Broker network itself, hardly admissible in any court. And if P's people were already at the crash site, surely they'd remove any evidence that may or may not have survived – or just blow it up entirely, to cover their tracks.

Worse still, he was beginning to wonder just how convenient it was that an attack on the President had occurred just at the right time to distract the Alliance, at literally the exact moment an asari Spectre with well known ties to the Broker found information that only the Normandy could check on.

He grimly admired how neatly the Broker's people had done it. He'd seen firsthand how clean Tetrimus worked in how slickly the ragged turian had somehow convinced his own boss to revoke his suspension after the mess at Chora's Den and Dr. Michel's clinic, but he'd never really thought what that meant in terms of how the Broker probably had C-SEC infiltrated too.

As much as he disliked trusting people who had cut up aliens, this batch of Cerberus was at least polite enough to not call him or Telanya names. The burly one had even given him a few tips on bringing in the choke on a Phaeston.

"Damn good weapon your people make, Detective. The rest of what you get up to is completely backassward, but your people make a good rifle."

Garrus had nodded. "Thanks. I think. Is that a complement or a backhanded insult?"

The gruff shape of Theo had laughed quietly. "Both, maybe. Dealt with your people a long time. Fought with one of the big-shit Palavanus once, even. Big corn-fed fucker, Vorkus."

Garrus swallowed. "I … knew him. He's dead."

The man sat down, grunting. "Hell. Didn't think _anything_ could kill him. How'd he die?"

Garrus sighed. "A long, ugly story involving plant zombies and an omni-bayonet."

Theo had laughed again. "Well, shit, get to telling."

As blunt as the Cerberus soldier was, he wasn't hostile. The other one, who smelled like oiled leather and blood – Garrus didn't care for him. The man's heartbeat never altered in speed, and his voice didn't either. He was coiled like a stalking renva beast on a hunt, patient in the deep grass, and something about his whispery voice made Garrus itch to hold his rifle a bit tighter.

The last human, the one with the too-thick waist and over-wide face, wasn't much fun to talk to or listen to either. She had the bark of command in her voice, but didn't understand how to delegate, or how to motivate. She acted like a damned Primarch, but with no context to back up her talk, he tended to ignore her.

Telanya spoke to him later. "The human female is … striking. But her words are so ugly and hard."

Garrus flicked a mandible. "Her waist is too thick, her legs too skinny, and the fixation with breasts is something I have never understood in humans or asari."

Telanya laughed quietly, arching her back. Garrus knew she'd been working out like crazy the past few months with crunches and other methods, and her own waist was deliciously slender due to her efforts. "Well, the Thirty, honor to their names, are always saying asari are superior."

He shook his head. "Maybe. She just smells … off. Like...it's almost as if I can smell drell on her, but that makes no sense. I can't really see her sleeping with an alien if she's Cerberus, and there's no such thing as a half-human, half-drell outside of really bad science fiction movies."

Telanya's lips quirked, then she sighed. "Garrus...this whole trip is crazy. You know I go where you go, but … what do we do if we get there and there are too many of them to fight?"

He sighed, and gently wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "We'll have to wait and see. I'm not going to throw my life away if I can help it – Shepard wouldn't want that. But I can't just ignore this either."

She nodded. "No heroics, Garrus."

He smiled. "Promise. My days of battles over a rope bridge across a volcano – " He broke off as she hit him and laughed, and he tried to relax a little himself.

He could only wait and see, after all.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Pel really, really wished he could take his helmet off and have a cigarette.

Why in the fuck was Miranda tramping around with her face showing to everyone, while he and Kai – who everyone in their right mind thought were long fucking dead – required to hide? He still hadn't gotten a good answer from the Bossman on that, and this gig sucked even worse than writing up how turian dicks worked.

At least the eye-candy was a lot better. Miranda was okay but a touch too top-heavy for his taste. The old asari broad had the best tits he'd ever seen in his entire life, though, and the two other blues were knockouts too. He certainly couldn't fault Shepard's taste.

Quarians had those stupid suits and he didn't bother looking, and Shields ...well, she was hot, but she also had that ugly 'stab you in your sleep' vibe Rachel always threw off. Mike Saracino couldn't throw a punch and looked like a sissy, but he had balls of steel to stick his dick in a girl like Rachel Florez, and Pel didn't plan on taking any chances with his own in that regard.

The other two – the mousy pilot and the big-ass turian fucker – didn't bother him too much either. He didn't know much about the pilot except he was almost as sarcastic as Kai. The spike, on the other hand, seemed pretty solid. He wasn't droning on about duty and honor and he was clearly banging a blue, so he wasn't much like most Hierarchy turians Pel had run into.

Pel didn't think much about Omega. He figured there would be either be a lot of goons with guns that would die really fast, or a few elites and a big-ass fight. Given that had a really hacked-off asari princess, one of the craziest asari blade mistresses in the galaxy, and the entire team that helped Shepard beat the shit out of both Saren and Benezia, he figured they could take pretty much anyone except maybe Tazzik.

Then again, Bossman had prepared for that one too.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Miranda Lawson found herself torn between irritation and awe. Irritation at her companions, and awe at how smoothly things were going.

When the news of Shepard's death had arrived, the Illusive Man had been very disappointed. Miranda had been looking for some kind of action from the Alliance, spending her time and influence blocking and misdirecting AIS inquiries and the like. She'd been glad when the Council had sent Shepard off on a wild goose chase as it gave her more time to secure things in the Alliance itself.

And while she wasn't looking, the Broker had struck with his usual elegance. She'd never seen Harper look defeated before, and even Trellani looked vaguely upset, for reasons neither explained.

When the message from Jason Dunn came in, about what Shepard's old team mate Beatrice Shields had told him, however, the Illusive Man was suddenly energized. Sending out Kai in their fastest pinnace, he'd reactivated contacts and gotten a hold of assets Miranda never even knew he had. While the media speculated and Shields made her way to Earth, he was a whirlwind – hacking, making calls, spinning a hastily thrown together web of supplies, facilities, and plans.

There had barely been enough time to throw it all together before the funeral, and Harper had actually arrived late, barely in time to see the coffin sink into the ground. She'd been driving for him, listening as he smoothly convinced two alien females who had no reason to trust him to believe in some wild story about stasis fields and Spectre armor.

Oh, the field existed. But it wasn't going to have kept Shepard alive. Maybe in one or at least two pieces, but not alive. Miranda knew better. From the moment this entire mess had started, an idea had popped into her head, one that Harper had quickly confirmed the first hour after they realized a body could be recovered.

"Have Doctor Minsta pull everything we have on Project Osiris...and any details we managed to get from our surreptitious scans of our old friend Richard Williams."

She'd argued. Oh, how she'd argued. Shepard was almost certainly paste in some smoking wreckage on an ice world. It wasn't like you could survive a crash landing when your entire ship came apart after all.

Then the Illusive Man had told her about an experience he had, long ago on Shanxi. About how he'd listened, while a captive of Saren, and watched the Spectre cannibalize a stasis element from his own armor to try and stave off death for a wounded member of his team. How he'd heard the fact that ever suit of Spectre Armor had such a function, to try and preserve the body as intact as possible so that any evidence of who or what had killed the agent could be recovered.

Harper didn't expect to find Shepard alive. He had given her specific instructions, and most of her study was on outrageous theories by a little-known genetech company that even now was having its stock bought by BenCore Enterprises.

A company called Wilson Genomics, run by a rather unethical if brilliant scientist of the same name who'd been one of the key players in literally bringing Vice President Huerta back to life after death.

She bit her lip. Her awe at the very audacious nature of what Harper was planning was palatable. But as he had pointed out, they had no real choices. He doubted they could bring Shepard back to life from death, but the attempt was certainly worth a try. The technology had never been tested, but it existed. Even in the even they failed, they'd at least learn something.

And if they succeeded... Even Miranda could see the advantages.

It would give them unparalleled access to whatever Shepard had learned of the Reapers. It would give them a literal hero to renovate the now smeared and tarnished name of Cerberus. If they played their cards right, with enough time, Shepard could even be reinserted into society, her noble status and miracle survival carefully tweaked to give Cerberus an in into the government it now lacked.

Miranda knew it could work. But as she had argued, it could also be a pointless chase. If Shepard's brain was a splattered mess, nothing would bring her back. If her body was so broken even the radical technologies of Osiris wouldn't work, then surely nothing could be done.

That was when Harper had gestured to the glowing shape of Vigil, floating serenely in the air. "Lucky for us, Miranda, we have an ally who has access to technology far beyond that of Osiris."

She still thought it was stupid and risky, and daring the very teeth of Omega downright suicidal. She wasn't very impressed with her team, either.

Shepard's asari wife was clearly unstable, and the way she was playing with her gun made Miranda want to sneer. The quarian girl was a tolerable engineer, if entirely too mouthy, but then again the pilot was worse, like a mix of Jason Dunn's grating idiocy combined with the too-sharp tongue of Kai Leng. The other asari and the turian were just there – they were jumped up police officers, no matter the role they played in the Benezia Incident.

The only interesting one was Liara's father, the well known Aethyta Vasir. A famous warrior and mercenary, Miranda felt she was the only one of the team who could hold a candle to the skills of Kai Leng and Pellham. She didn't like working with the Odd Couple, but she was forced to admit their skills were very impressive – and they never failed in missions.

She was more nervous about going into combat herself. She'd been excellently trained, supremely prepared, and had every advantage in senses, speed, strength and biotics. Even so, she'd only seen hard battle a few times, and this was likely to be a mess.

She cleared her head, using a mental formula of various weights of molecules to do so, then refocused on the medical text. She had to be ready to implement the first of the steps Vigil had instructed her on almost as soon as they had Shepard's body, and there was no room for error.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Of all those aboard, Aethyta was the calmest.

She was not happy to see Liara going from depressed and despairing to angry and ready to headbutt someone, but there wasn't tide-damned all she could do about that. It reminded her of how Benezia acted when her turian boyfriend had been killed before they had a chance to bond, and she smiled at the memory.

Nezzy could get really, really angry sometimes.

Liara's friends she didn't really pay much attention to, but she kept a close eye on the slender human, the one with a sword. She knew sword-styles when she saw footwork, and this one was nasty, nasty and dirty. If there had been a little more room in this ship, she'd have asked him for a spar – as it was, she noted he kept an eye on her almost as much as she did on him.

She'd never dueled a human blademaster before, and was almost looking forward to see him at work. The other one was a gun-toting bully boy – probably sharper than he looked, and he'd clearly been around aliens before. Something about his voice sounded almost familiar, but she couldn't place it. Then again, she'd seen a lot of people and faces cross into her bar, she'd probably served him a drink a time or two.

The third human, the sexy one – wow. She had to be augmented, Aethyta hadn't seen an ass like that since the quarians had to start wearing suits. But there was something almost wooden about her expression, as if she was acting. Her snappish tone, her clear expectation of obedience, her narrowed eyes – this one was used to being large and in charge, and frustrated about having to work with aliens, she guessed.

Tough titty.

Aethyta focused her mind on the Nineteen Petals of the Bladedance, clearing her emotions and thoughts. Unlike the rest of them, she'd fought the Broker's people before, and P's too. She'd known Tetrimus when he was a young ass punk biotic, and later on when he was a cripple in a lift chair, bitter and hateful. She knew all too well if that scary bastard was there, someone in this group was going to die.

She was old and her damned back hurt. If it came down to it, she'd make sure Liara got Shepard – or at least Shepard's body – out of there safe and sound. There couldn't be much worse than fighting a damned immortal version of her ex-bondmate after all, and she would rather die than let Little Wing get killed.

She glanced over at the turian and his clanless bondmate. The kid was good with a rifle from what she remembered of Liara's memories, but a hothead. The clanless – hardly anything to bother worrying about. If she'd really survived a damned ardat-yakshi and being shot to pieces on on the Citadel she had to be tougher than she looked, but she was still a clanless – weak and following.

No, the real wild-card in this mess would be the Broker's people. If it was just thugs, this would be a cakewalk. If big boys showed up – or P's doped up, laugh-happy goons – it was going to get messy.

Problem was, there was every chance someone she couldn't beat, like Tazzik or P. himself, might show. She knew she was good, she also knew P. had torn apart a war-priestess almost thirty years back single-handedly and the Temple kept it quiet. So had P – odd, given the bastard usually bragged – but it didn't change the fact that he was a relli in a fight and could probably kill two or three of them by himself.

They needed a plan.

With that thought, she stood and walked over to the human swordsman. He was leaning against a wall, examining his own blade for flaws, and looked up as she came up to him.

His first words, in a cool whisper, made her want to laugh. "The bay is too small to spar, Matriarch."

She grinned. "I know. Not what was going to ask. You have a plan if somebody ugly shows up to this little party?"

The man sheathed his sword in a motion so practiced and smooth he hardly seemed to move at all. The blank face place of the helmet faced hers, tilting slightly. "I suspect if we face extremely powerful opposition, Theo and I will handle it. You will be welcome to assist."

She shook her head. "And if P. himself shows up?"

He stilled. "Ah. A possibility. I have not studied him intently, Cerberus has little hard information on him."

She nodded. "Figured that. He fights either at very long range, or in melee. Fast. Very fast. Shrugs off the worst hits with crazy laughter and pain only makes him fight harder."

The man nodded. "You imply he will have to be overwhelmed and forced back, not defeated."

She shrugged. "I have a few tricks. You don't get the title of blademistress out of a Tupari machine."

He gave something that she realized was a rasping chuckle. The sound was very creepy, and he pushed off from the wall a moment later. "It truly is a pity we cannot spar, Matriarch. But I will discuss options with you, if you like."

She sighed. This was going to give her nightmares, she just knew it.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The ship erupted into the space around Omega, drifting gently away from the main relay in the system. The other relay, the ominous Omega-4 relay, glowed with faint red radiance, and marker bouys transmitted warnings in a dozen trade languages to stay well clear of it.

Joker brought the ship in, flat and slow, towards the mushroom shape of the station. "Jesus, that thing is as big as the Citadel."

Next to him, Miranda nodded. "It is very much like a dark Citadel in many ways, Mr. Moreau. Take us down towards the lower levels, and bring up our comm array."

Omega glittered with dark lights, surrounded by nimbus of ragged, ugly warships, tramp freighters and endless ranks of small raider and corvettes. Lights bloomed in the hollowed asteroid at the top of the station, the glowing light of eezo mining casting flickering shadows far down the multitude of spires and towers that descended below.

Joker swallowed as his sensors began counting the ships. "Holy fucking God, how many damned ships does Aria _have_?!"

Miranda gave a tight smile. "These are not, thankfully, all hers. But she has no doubt called the warlords of her circle to her. This is why the Council and Alliance are so fearful, Mr. Moreau. Many may be salvaged and older, but if the entire Traverse unites they can nearly match the turians in weight of ships, if not in dreadnoughts."

She pointed at ugly metallic stations fixed to other asteroids. "And invasion? Impossible. Those are mass drivers – not mere accelerators, they throw slugs weight hundreds or even thousands of kilograms. They could shatter a dreadnought with a single shot, powered by the horde of eezo and uranium she mines and paid for by the drugs, slaves and illegal wares."

"fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck..."

She suppressed a smile as she hushed him and picked up the mike, triggering the vocal pad at her throat. Her normally melodic voice took on the clipped overtones and bland drawl of a Black Rim salarian, and she spoke in their rapid, choppy cant.

"Veseel Bledtish to Omega docking. Requesting birthing. Will transmit payment via blackconn upon request."

The tired voice of a turian answered her. "Vessel Bledtish, this is Omega. Ring 177, dock slip nineteen. Fee is five hundred credits. Dump charge is two thousand, HE3 is 200 for slip, and 800 for pure. Aria does not allow the sale of eezo on this station, if you're hauling it you have ten seconds to get the spirits out of here."

Miranda sniffed. "Eezo? Certainly not. Not idiots. Transmitting payment. Docking lane clearance course?"

The turian chuckled. "Come to course...uh...ah. Two four seven tac nine, slow your mark to three, please. Mind the mess near ring 170, some idiot from the Suns tried to play dodge-dock with a bounty hunter and ate a torpedo."

"Understood Bledtish out." The last words were nearly a single blur, and Miranda shifted the comm off, tapping her throat pad again. "I hate talking like that."

Joker was giving her a strange look. "How many settings does that thing have?"

Miranda was not usually one for levity, but her singing nerves needed some relief. With a small smile she triggered it again, her voice now sounding much like Tali'Zorah's. "Enough to fool almost anyone, bosh'tet. Now _fly_."

Joker shivered. "And I thought Jiong was creepy. Taking us in."

The ship moved slowly past longer lines of various vessels – bulk haulers, full of food or stolen goods. Slave transports, battered and grim. More than a few damaged batarian ships with markings from the Hegemony Fleet.

Joker brought them down the long strips of docking rings, coming into a slow rising maneuver halfway down. "This fucking place is gigantic! How are you going to find Shepard in this mess?"

Miranda sighed. "First, this is why were are here early. Second, we have a contact aboard the station who will be assisting us. Third, the reason for the upgraded sensors is so that while you sit on the ship you can help us look."

Joker adjusted his hat – a plain black ball-cap instead of his SA issued one – and nodded. "Fine, be that way. I'll just sit here like I always did on the Normandy and Kazan while you guys get shot full of holes."

Miranda grimaced. "Are you always this upbeat?"

Joker sighed, tapping the controls. "They named me Joker as an _insult_ in Academy. What do you think, lady?"


	37. Chapter 37 : Chaos Begins

_**A/N**: Here, things get chaotic._

_I would appreciate feedback on this chapter, and to see what people like and dislike about it._

_Reviews are always welcome, positive or negative._

* * *

_'Move your enemy. Do not let them move you. If you dictate the location and the time of when you have to fight, the other person has already lost, be it a single soldier or a general'. _

_\- Rachel Florez, 'Tactical Considerations', unpublished_

* * *

Bray sometimes hated his job.

Scratch that. He liked the job, just not his boss. Not because she was female, though. That gave him some of the best shit in the universe to have a perfectly good reason to stare at.

No, he hated his job because his boss was fucking crazy, and yet her crazy had worked for centuries. He never forgot his father's advice. "Aria is like a plasma cannon. You don't have to understand it for it to work...or for it to kill you."

His father, sadistic bastard that he was, had worked for Aria. So had his father's father, and so on and so forth. After one too many involvements in one too many revolts in the Hegemony, the whole family had bolted almost a century and a half ago from batarian space. Aria was the only one who would take them in, and thus they were her servants and protectors.

Bray didn't know how in the name of the Pillars his ancestor had swallowed enough pride to work for a female, but he had – and so had the rest of Bray's extended family. Over the years, they'd moved up from dock muscle to bully boys to head-crackers to integral parts of Aria's intricate security force. Never had a single member of his family betrayed her. And none would, either – he had decades of stories of what happened to people who irritated Aria.

Bray was responsible for making sure nothing irritated Aria.

He would have used the term 'surprised' or on occasion, 'angered', but nothing ever surprised her, and anything that managed to anger her was usually extremely dead by the time she got angry. His boss didn't seem to do anything but sit around in her bar, drink, wave her titties around and sleep with a truly ridiculous amount of people, but somehow she managed to know everything that happened on Omega, and everyone he knew was terrified of her.

He often suspected the people she was supposedly fucking were actually her contacts and operatives. He never asked, though. He'd learned a long time ago if you didn't need to know an answer on Omega, you'd live longer not asking the question in the first place. Still, the fact that Aria had sniffed out plots and assassins before Bray even had a hint about them was often troubling.

It would have been frightening if Bray had any fear left. Having to all too often be the go-between of Aria and that crazy bitch Jona Sederis had burned the fear out of him about fifteen years back. Now he just felt itchy.

Today he felt very itchy.

The Broker was doing some kind of deal with P on the station in a day or two, and details were scarce. They'd hired out an entire private dock, not one on the rings but in the small caverns that formed the rock-base of the main stem, sealed and secured from casual entry or observation. As a matter of course, Aria had these monitored and bugged, but the Broker's people had subverted those systems and bugs over the past couple of hours.

Aria was supposedly going to be paid fifty million credits, in the form of state-of-the-art eezo mining equipment, and thirty million more in hard bonds if the deal went down and remained secure, but wouldn't get the merch or the bonds until it was done. The Broker had expected interference from any number of sources, but his representative – yet another fat-ass volus – gave no details except that the Alliance could not be allowed to find out anything about the meet.

Bray sighed. Like the monkeys were going to come to Omega for any reason. They were still crying over the fact their stupid fleets were a wreck and the fact someone had nearly blown up their Hegemon, or whatever they called him. Bray personally wished the Alliance would show up, it would be hilarious to have them shot to pieces by the pirates they felt so superior to.

Still, Aria had given the orders and he obeyed, personally running herd what was jokingly called customs by the people of Omega. She didn't want any problems, given the size of the payday she was going to get, and if he even saw an Alliance ship he was to blow it right out of the sky.

He didn't expect to have to do that. Right now he was thinking and worrying about the gangs, and figuring them to be the most likely source of any problems, rather than the Alliance.

Six gangs dominated the station. The Blood Pack was mostly into mercenary work for all the wrong causes and reasons and a bit of red sand running. Eclipse was for wet work, scaring the shit out of someone, and blowing things up. The Blue Suns did protection work, protection rackets, and breaking protective security systems.

The Shadows were mostly about data infiltration and hacking, the Talons mostly into good old-fashioned muggings and slave trading, and the Twelve Bells into outright theft and piracy. None of them had enough power or dead brain cells to challenge Aria, of course, She'd been gathering failed commandos for over three hundred years, and by now she had over five thousand of the crazy hussies.

Still, the gangs often had to be watched to make sure they didn't get out of line. And none of them really liked the Broker that much, as all too often he sold information to various governments that got their plans sidelined and their people blown the fuck up. P. was more popular but he had this ugly tendency to kill his people when they ran out of use to him, so only the desperate worked for him.

Bray figured it was the average ganger who was going to start any problems. The big leaders had enough sense not to piss Aria off, but the lower level ward leaders had the brains of a vorcha but only half the survival instinct. He'd already had two of the Twelve Bells blown to shit for talking about raiding the Broker's ships.

He would have put more of his men to watch the gangs, but Aria seemed to think the Broker was hoping just for that to happen. After all, if they blew up one or two gangs, that would be a way to weaken Aria's forces on Omega as they dealt with the backlash.

Bray didn't understand the weird interaction between Aria, the Broker, and P, and honestly didn't care as long as he could do his job. Right now, that was monitoring the station sensors and incoming traffic for signs of problems. And as he walked past a display, he saw something that caught his eye.

A turian operator had just assigned a small salarian cutter to a mid-dock position, and was in the process of scanning the ship for eezo or other items Aria didn't allow on board. The scan came up totally clean, but the registry caught Bray's attention.

It was one of the Shifter's recon ships. Bray's four eyes narrowed, and he walked over to the plinth where the operator stood. "That ship. Who is it?"

The turian, an older fellow named Kathtic, shrugged. "Beats me. Some salarian answered, sounded like Black Rim Solus-cant to me. She's armed to the teeth, but clean – not even picking up out of band transmissions."

Bray folded his arms. The Shifter didn't usually operate on or even around Omega – ostensibly he had to keep a clean-ish record to keep living and operating on the Citadel. Why would one of his ships be here now?

He checked the communications consoles, seeing if they had any contact from the Shifter – maybe some kind of data shipment, or high-grade drugs. But he found nothing. He even shot off a message to the salarian, although it would take over five hours to reach him. Still, it was something strange, and strange could mean trouble.

He tapped his comm. "Aria."

The languid voice came back in his hearing canal. The only sign of Aria's favor for Bray over her other lieutenants was that he could address her by her name and not as Queen. "Yes, Bray? I'm occupied."

He suppressed a sigh. Occupied either meant she was fooling around or drunk. Wonderful. "A ship of the Shifter is about to dock, and you said to alert you of anything out of the ordinary."

He could almost see her eyes narrowing as spoke. "Interesting. I haven't heard anything from Edat...and we have no messages from the Circle?"

He'd already checked that. He wasn't stupid. "No. The ship is clean, but we were not expecting one. Right now, it's headed to mid-dock. Send someone to meet them?"

Aria was silent for a long moment. "...no. I will contact you in a few minutes." She clicked off, and he shook his head.

Kathtic flicked a mandible. "Should I bring them to a halt?"

Bray reached for his pouch of krathka leaves, putting one into his mouth and chewing softly, the faint narcotic clearing his mild headache. "No. If the queen wants them stopped, she would tell us."

Five minutes later, Bray's implant vibrated. "Bray here."

Aria's voice had the low, sensual edge to it that she got when she was either intrigued by something, or plotting to do something truly appalling. "A curious thing, Bray. That ship of the Shifter's was stolen almost a year ago, in some kind of failed raid."

Bray frowned. "A raid? Against who?"

He could literally feel her smiling. "Cerberus. It seems the Broker's concerns about interference were on the money if off the mark."

Bray was now very confused. "Cerberus was destroyed ..."

Aria laughed. "And that raises the wonderful question of who is now in control of this ship, now doesn't it? Is this a single blind, Cerberus survivors using the Shifter's ship to sneak into the one place Commissariat spies won't find them? A double blind, someone knowing that Cerberus had the ship and planning something to lay the blame in that direction? Or something else entirely..."

Bray checked his omni. "I've got three squads near the mid-ring. I can have them there in five."

Aria was silent a long moment, then laughed again. "Not yet, Bray. If these are Cerberus … leftovers … they might be useful to snap up and find a use for. And if they aren't I don't want them to know I'm onto them until I know what they plan to do. Have your people keep an eye on them, nothing more."

Bray hated when Aria got like this, but kept his voice level. "Sure thing, Aria. I'll see to it myself."

**O-ATTWN-O**

As the ship docked, Miranda gathered everyone in the cargo bay. She had a helmet in her own hands, but hadn't put it on yet.

"Omega is extremely dangerous, and it is very likely that the thin disguise of the registry of this ship won't hold up for long. We got here as quickly as we could for more than one reason. We wanted to get ahead of the Broker's people. But we have a contact waiting for us, one who will help us in our stated goal. And we need to make sure that the ruler of the station, Aria, does not interfere."

Pel suddenly realized why he and Kai kept their helmets on.

Miranda's voice hardened. "I'm sure you are all here for Shepard, but from here on out, I'm in charge. I have details none of you do, and my goal is the same as yours – but I'm the only one with experience in command. If that's going to be a problem, let me know now."

Shields was the first to speak. "I don't give a shit whose in charge as long as you can actually fucking lead." She shrugged.

Garrus glanced at Tali, then, Telanya, and finally Liara, before shrugged as well. "Not a problem as long as you don't try to use us as bait."

Miranda sighed. "I'm aware that Cerberus has done very little to earn your trust, or for that matter anyone else's. But the Illusive Man is committed not only to stopping this outrage, but ensuring a certain message is sent to the Broker. Having any of you die would be politically disastrous for Cerberus, I assure you."

Tali's eyes narrowed. "Well, that's comforting."

Liara ground her teeth. "We should get moving."

Miranda tamped down on her temper at the banter and merely nodded, putting on her helmet. "I'll do the talking. Kai, Pel, flanks. The rest of you should form up in the middle. Mr. Moreau will be staying on the ship, using the scanners when and where we direct him."

Joker came out of the cockpit. "And what do I do if someone tries to board?"

Miranda smiled. "The ship is resistant to code-breaking. If dock authorities want in, let them in. There's nothing they'll find that implicates Cerberus in anything. Simply tell them you are a chartered pilot being paid by an asari and a salarian and you know nothing and want to know nothing."

Joker sighed. "Great."

Miranda glanced at Aethyta. "Many here will recognize you if you speak, Matriarch. But we may need your assistance when it comes time to talk to Aria."

Aethyta snorted. "Well there's more to Aria than you know, kiddo. That conversation won't go real well. But if I have to talk, I will." She put on her own helmet, and checked her sword.

**O-ATTWN-O**

To the uninitiated, Omega was an experience unlike any other. Mostly, an experience in horror and depravity.

Giant under-towers and linked galleries of buildings jutted in every direction like some crazed explosion of construction machines had sown them willy-nilly. Throngs of air cars and passenger trucks soared through chaotic sky-lanes, while crowds of people shuffled through transport tubes that writhed around the base and the towers of the station like a network of blood vessels.

If the Citadel was glittering lights and elegance set atop a thin underskin of darkness, Omega was that darkness in all its unholy glory. Everyone went armed. The voices of turians, salarians, batarians, humans and asari mingled as they hawked unimaginable things of wonder and horror.

Food of all kinds, exotic animals and furs lined various racks and storefronts. Lengths of asari shimmersilk sat alongside fresh-forged asari warp swords, and stacks of haptic video competed with bootleg programs and faux-produced consumer goods. But there was also worse.

Young asari slaves, modified for sexual pleasure, eyes wide and glossy black. Racks of highly illegal weapons, unregistered on any world. Poisons that would kill a dozen krogan with a sniff. Highly immoral genetic modification kits. Banned religious texts, stolen Prothean knicknacks, rogue AI's slaved to injection programs to destroy unwary hackers.

Software to control injected nanites inside a living being and puppet them from a distance. Drugs of every kind, for every race. Rare art, richly decorated cultural artifacts, snuff videos, tainted HE3 to sabotage rivals – the list of depravities went on and on.

Garrus had never seen such horror in his entire life. He walked in the middle of the group in a daze, aware of Telanya clutching his arm so tight it hurt, but the pain didn't even register.

He saw turian eggs being hawked by the dozen, in a food stall, and felt his gullet heave. He saw battered, filthy batarian slaves, being sold to a group of krogan with two vorcha sidekicks, who were chuckling evilly. He saw a drell sniff a line of red sand off a human female's belly, and then smile as she took him by the hand into a nearby alley, and shadow figures leapt him, knives and blood flashing.

He saw a group of beaten and bruised salarians, naked, with bright red marks on their bodies, and haptic signage : 'Custom cuts. Prepared on site. Freeze dry or compressed rations available.' When he finally realized what they were selling he had to dig his hands into his thighs to keep from drawing his weapons.

No one cared. They stepped over an asari shot dead in the street, her entire skull caved in by the heavy caliber round that had splattered her brains over the hard metal walkways, and people just kept going by. The only security he saw were sneering asari, in skintight green armor, who did nothing to stop the violence or crime, unless someone messed with the merchant stalls bearing a single sigil, that of a pair of blue lips.

Aethyta sighed. "Kiss of Aria. Means they're untouchable." Garrus jerked as she spoke, and inclined her head. "Keep your cool, kid. This isn't even the bad part of Omega, trust me. I've seen shit on this station that would make a batarian slaver cry at the injustice."

Garrus blinked. "Batarians don't have tear ducts."

She nodded, her shoulders tense, and he just shook his head. How could anyone – no matter how much it might cost in blood or lives to stop it – not act on this insanity? He finally spoke again. "Why doesn't anyone stop this? Why don't the people rise up?"

Pel laughed. "Goddamn. Rise up? What, you expect fucking someone to give a shit? People come here when the rest of the galaxy has already fucked them over and out. When life itself has stuck its dick in your ass so many times you tell yourself you might as well get used to it."

The big man gestured to a beaten-down group of workers – salarians with dull eyes and slumped stances, turians bare of facepaint and with scuffed plating, humans with slack muscles and a tautness to their features that made their faces look like skulls. "These people? They're fucking dead. Decency doesn't exist here, because there's too much evil. You'd get knifed every trying. So everyone acts worse, and the really bad fuckers have to do even worse than that to impress everyone."

Aethyta nodded. "Omega was a shithole when Nezzy and I were Liara's age and Aria wasn't even born yet. It's always been that way."

Garrus trembled. "Someone should stop it. It isn't right." He could almost feel the matriarch's ancient gaze upon him as she turned her head in his direction, as they passed a set of shops selling organs in chilled, sealed cryogenic paks.

"You can't stop despair, Detective. You can't stop surrender, or fear, or the exhaustion of the will to be a better person. And this is what Omega is. It is the end." She smiled. "You scrub off all the fancy words, and Omega is just what the old asari name for it used to be."

She glanced up. "There's a period of time between when the sun sets and the moon rises on Thessia, when all is dark and the only light is that of the stars. We call it y'hathaiel. It doesn't translate well. The best way I can say it in modern asari is 'that time between despair and death, when nothing can be seen except darkness.'

Garrus felt himself shudder at the words and surprisingly, Kai Leng was the one to speak next. "That is indeed this place. Omega is not for people who believe in justice, or mercy, or any of the polite fictions normal people use to prevent themselves from sinking into chaos."

Garrus sighed. "And no one has the strength of will to stand up for these people and help them?"

Pel snorted. "Oh, it's happened. They fail. They always fucking fail. And then shit gets worse, because the only way to break a fucker's spirit faster than despair is false hope."

Liara swallowed at those words, and her voice was so soft they barely could hear her. "Sometimes false hope is all we have to keep us going."

Aethyta placed her hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Maybe so, kiddo. Some people would rather die for false hope than live with the surety that everything was fucking pointless." She gestured around. "But these people don't even have that anymore."

In front, Miranda consulted her omni-tool and shifted the direction they walked in. She didn't participate in the conversation among the aliens – Omega was what it was. It was a cesspit, and like all low places it would collect garbage and toxins. Feeling sorry for assorted alien trash – or the human trash also here – wouldn't fix anything.

Still, she was hardly pleased to be here. Her armored boots were sticky from at least five pools of alien blood. She could feel the miasma of this hellhole clinging to her suit – she'd probably burn this armor as soon as she got done with this crazy task. She glanced aside at Kai and sub-vocalized into her comm implant. "Anything?"

The assassin glanced around coolly. "No sign of the drell...yet. We are almost to the meeting place, so he may be there. We are being followed, however. At least two groups, batarians and turians. Aria's people. And two vorcha, in the shadows of the nearby rooftops, using IR goggles." He paused. "The vorcha … are not the usual sort of people in Aria's employ. Blood Pack, perhaps."

She nodded, licking her lips inside her helmet. She knew about Omega from video, from reading, from hearing about it, but she had never been here before. Kai and Pel had. If anyone on the station knew they were here, killers from every corner would come out of the woodwork.

She grimaced at the thought and refocused, seeing the meeting spot ahead. "Be alert. Our contact should be here soon." She walked past the high, irregular arch of metal carved with images of Aria stabbing a heavyset batarian in his eyes, entering a wide alleyway dominated on both sides by towering black walls, windows visible only a hundred feet up.

The alley ran for a good six hundred feet before ending in some kind of warehouse door, one heavily grafittied. The little group came to a stop, and Miranda looked around, putting her hands on her hips.

The alley was empty, and Miranda sighed. "Great. He's not here."

Her abnormally sharp hearing may have caught the barest scrape of something from above. Before she could even react, both Aethyta and Kai Leng suddenly moved, both snapping out swords. The blades came to a halt against a pair of upraised metallic bracers on the arms of the figure who just appeared out of nowhere, barely three feet from her.

Wearing a long, dark red coat of some heavy, waxy-looking cloth, the figure was wearing a hood of the same material with a thin trim of black silk. The red coat gapped open, revealing a set of thin black leather armor of some kind, and nothing else. The black bracers on each arm of the coat were decorated with images of what looked like sand dunes, identical to the tall metal boots worn on the figure's feet.

The voice coming from the darkened cowl had an edge of amusement to the raspy whisper that emerged. "Your people are good, but still too slow, Ms. Lawson."

Aethyta dropped her blade first, and Kai Leng did so a moment later, but kept it in hand.. Miranda merely turned to face the man.

"You didn't specify how you would contact us, Mr. Krios."

Slender, black-gloved hands pulled back the cowl, revealing the features of a drell. Overlapping scales formed the drell's forehead, each one marked with a graven rune, and the exposed tissues of the cheeks only emphasized the strong jaw, sensual lips, and large dark eyes that stared at them all. "I am not in the habit of bad tradecraft, Ms. Lawson."

Shields took a good look at the robes, the runes, and the fact their wearer was drell and sighed. "Ah...fuck."

Garrus blinked. "Krios? You related to Kolyat?"

The figure nodded. "My estranged son in C-SEC, Mr. Vakarian. I assume he is well?"

Garrus nodded faintly, and Miranda sighed. "Social hour can come later. You have the information?"

Thane Krios folded his arms in front of him, nodding. "Of course. The deal will happen as soon as the ship arrives, which could be as early as tonight, or in two days. P is on the main ship itself, which is an older model turian heavy cruiser, escorted by six light cruisers and a wing of converted patrol boats with upgraded missiles. The Broker force meeting them is three of the Broker's special salarian assault cruisers and his … executive ship."

Miranda narrowed her eyes. "And what might that be?"

Krios smiled. "A Unification-Era turian dreadnought, the Vokias. Believed lost. Rarely deployed."

Tali looked at Miranda, eyes wide. "They have a ken'tosh dreadnought?!"

Pel chuckled. "Well, so much for the board the ship and take 'em out option. That shit won't work."

Krios nodded. "Indeed. However, the reason for such heavy security is simple enough – The Broker has planned to betray P., and P. plans to betray the Broker. Due to the inventive manipulations of your Illusive Man, both think the other is the source of several leaks. Aria is also a consideration...not that either one plans to actually pay her."

Aethyta snorted. "They actually plan to double cross Aria? That sounds really stupid."

Krios folded his arms. "Aria has not been informed of Collector involvement, and she is … very aggressive towards them, given the proximity of the Omega Four relay. Furthermore, her people will soon discover that Shepard's body is being sold on her station. The Council can not simply let that slide."

Miranda sighed. "So this entire thing is going to explode. While not the best of results, the chaos will draw eyes away from us – and hopefully, from Shepard's body. That gives us a chance. What about who will be doing the trade?"

Krios frowned. "Tetrimus is occupied, but Tazzik will be overseeing the transfer. P. himself will be handling his part of the operation. I do not know how many soldiers and support people they have, but Aria is already moving her own soldiers around the docking bay – she will not allow them to disembark many of their troops. There is a great deal of distrust on all sides."

Kai Leng nodded. "Then if we get in and strike cleanly, we can perhaps convince Aria's forces the entire thing is a trap, or a setup?"

Krios only shrugged. "Anything is possible. However, I expected something of a larger force of operatives."

Miranda sighed. "The rest of the team was caught up in handling the fallout of the assassination attempt on Earth, and .. I had to improvise. These people are Shepard's teammates."

Krios' eyes flicked over them all, then he nodded. "Understood. The Broker does not know that I have discovered his role in my wife's death. He thinks me completely loyal. Thus I can slip you into the area unnoticed – as long as you are careful. I have noticed the Broker's people are going in armor with no Broker markings, so I can get you very close without too many questions, but the quarian … will probably not be able to fit in with the group."

Miranda nodded. "We need her close, though. There may be technical issues or something of that nature, and she is supposedly a good hacker."

Tali bristled, but Krios only nodded. "Many quarians are. I believe I have a relatively safe location. What of your escape method? Aria's people will lock the docks down at the first sign of problems."

Miranda tapped her comm. "The pilot is … _very_ good. He can get past any blockages. And the ship has a salarian photonic stealth emitter. It won't fool them for long, but they can't track via heat if we stay tight and close inside the arc of the station itself, and we have an alternative craft here to actually escape on."

She paused. "Will you be aiding in this endeavor?"

Krios glanced over her group again. "Beyond taking you to the site? Given the reduced number of your forces, that might be ill advised."

Krios said nothing for long moments, and Miranda swallowed. ".. of course, The payment we agreed on is yours, no matter what you choose...but I can double that if you actually help out. And my employer is close to figuring out who ordered the attack on your wife. We would also assist with helping you reach that person or group once we localize them."

Another long second passed. Krios tilted his head, as if listening to something, and then finally nodded. "Very well. We will assist you directly."

Miranda frowned. "We?"

With a sparse, elegant motion, he tapped his omni-tool, and the large warehouse door at the far end of the alleyway opened. "Your request was not unexpected, so I brought … assistance."

Three more drell in long red coats stepped out, arms folded. Pel's voice came in a whisper. "Holy Mother of God, three more?"

Shields' voice was wry "...beyond fuck. You can't be serious. Four? What are we going up against, all of fucking Omega?"

Liara frowned. "I am not familiar with drell, but there are only four of you. How much assistance can you offer?"

Kai, Pel, Shields, and Miranda all turned to face her as if shocked. Aethyta sighed. "Little Wing, they're not just drell. They're Remembrance Dancers."

Garrus felt his entire body go cold. "...four...fucking...Dancers?"

Krios nodded. "The situation is dire."

Shields actually laughed at that.

Tali glanced from person to person, reading the shock and fear in the body stances, and spoke hesitantly. "I.. I am not familiar with these Dancers."

Kai Leng gave a short, breathy laugh. "They are assassins, the finest in the galaxy. Certainly the most lethal. Trained from the womb to kill, with blade and biotics, speed and stealth. Krios alone could probably slaughter all of us in the time it would take you to draw your shotgun. The last time four Dancers acted in concert, they slaughtered six thousand krogan before dying – mostly due to Kepral's, not by being overwhelmed."

Krios gave a shallow bow. "You and the matriarch would present …. some difficulty. You appear quite skilled."

A hint of actual emotion and warmth colored Leng's voice. "A vast complement. My thanks."

Miranda wondered if the Illusive Man had planned on this, then dismissed the thought. "If that is all, then we should get moving. Did you manage the modifications to the transport we wanted, or must we walk?"

Krios gestured sharply, and the other three Dancers bowed. "My associates will move independently to the location. I have a transport vehicle that will accommodate everyone. It has been loaded with a high-order explosive device, per your request."

Miranda nodded, and Pel sighed. "We're headed to a damned hangout of some of the creepiest, evilest motherfuckers in the galaxy, in a shithole station on a flying bomb, and we have a pair of goddamned kids, a cop, a cybered-up traitor to the Broker, three old ass killers, Ms. Perfect, and a handful of Dancers. When do the Consort and Blasto show up and have wild sex in this bullshit joyride?"

Krios's lips bent in a small smile. "After we see Aria and have her give you a lap dance, no doubt."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Bray was almost sure he didn't want to be anywhere fucking near whatever was about to happen. Seeing Remembrance Dancers on Omega was not something you expected when you woke up in the morning, and seeing four of them was enough to make him even itchier than before.

Maybe he could still feel a little fear after all. That was a good thing in his mind, as it proved he wasn't insane or completely stupid yet. He checked the displays on his console again, operating from an armored turian APC Aria had salvaged from some wrecking yard and turned into a mobile command center for when riots or other outbreaks of discontent broke out.

He certainly wasn't about to get close to the group he was trailing. His two trailing teams had been taken down so fast they didn't even have time to message, along with three vorcha trackers from the Blood Pack, and a remote hacker using a drone from the Suns. A third group found nothing but bodies, and then literally vanished on the way back.

When he sent in a specialty team from the heavy hitters, he finally figured out what the hell he was facing as one of his men's onboard suit cameras got a flash of a drell face and a red robe as he was trisected in about half a second.

Remembrance Dancers. At least two, maybe more. Once he saw them meet up with the group from the Shifter's ship and realized there were four of them, he decided this was Extremely Bad. And when he informed Aria of this she only laughed.

"So. Dancers on the station, Bray. Four of them. Not that I'm panicking, but as I recall it took just two to reduce High Solarch Priana to a bloody corpse. Whoever this is, if they can pull together a stolen ship of the Shifter and more than one Dancer, that's enough of a threat to make me very, very interested. Where are they going?"

He cursed, and sent out two more scouts. When he saw the direction the beat-up looking transport was headed in, he cursed in every dialect he knew.

"They're headed towards Afterlife. Or at least in your direction."

Aria's voice purred across his commlink. "Well, that is certainly convenient. I'm moving out from Afterlife. You follow them, and do not lose them or you will lose your head. Make sure the Old One's piping is clear, he may need to be … utilized."

Bray sighed. "Aria, that thing isn't stable..."

Aria's tone dipped into ice. "I know that, Bray. But this is hardly normal circumstances. Get the damned freak moving and let me know when they hit the Black Strip."

Bray's people watched the transport truck move slowly and carefully through traffic, even while he got on a remote link and paid off some Shadows to pull a remote scan. When he found it was wired with enough explosives to blow a hole in the station walls, he almost ordered it shot down out of instinct, but instead just told Aria of the fact.

"Curiouser and curiouser. This has so many moving parts...very, very few players of the game go in for such complex plans. Bray, do me a favor. Have your little sniffers run a scan on that ship they came here in – DNA, pheromones, everything. I want to know who was on it."

The answer came back ten minutes later. "Humans, asari, turians, and at least one quarian. We already knew that, Aria, we saw them get off the damned ship. Why check?"

Aria was silent for several seconds. Then she started to laugh. "Can you think of any time you've seen humans, turians, asari and quarians working together?"

Bray's mind blanked. He hated when she got this way. Then again, there were fifty five different ways Aria could act, and Bray hated most of them that didn't involve her stripping naked and dancing while drunk. That had only happened once, and she's shot most of the people who'd seen it.

"No, I can't."

Aria hummed quietly. "Bray, Bray, Bray. This is what comes of you spending all your time being such a dull boy. Think. What just happened that blew up the news links?"

Bray sighed. "The Butcher got killed fucking around in our territory by geth."

"And did the brave humans of the Alliance recover the bodies?"

Bray thought. "No. It was a big uproar, as if they had the stones to come here and spit in your face."

Aria laughed. "Indeed, Bray, just so. Shepard fought Saren with an asari, a quarian, and a turian. And several humans. Now she is dead, deep in our space, and P. and the Broker suddenly want a private dock to transfer something for a sale worth tens of millions of credits. Out of nowhere, a ship stolen from the Shifter by Cerberus shows up and is met by not one but multiple Dancers. Does this sound somewhat … strange?"

Bray thought it sounded like something a high-caste would pull to draw gazes from an assassination attempt and said so, but Aria laughed again. "Hardly. No, something else is happening. Something... different. Something new. Something I didn't anticipate."

Her voice hardened. "Have the truck brought down to the Spire, and have the Old One meet me there. Be firm with him, but polite, or I'll need a new lieutenant. I'll go meet these guests of ours myself."

Bray stifled his immediate protest. "They have an explosive device. How do you know this isn't an assassination attempt?"

Her voice went back to amused. "I don't. But I'll take precautions. And it doesn't matter. Omega can't be killed."

**O-ATTWN-O**

"Reaching the relay soon, Father."

P. sat in comfort in his command ship, the Fatal Laugh. A powerful salarian prototype ship, it was somewhere between a super-heavy cruiser and a light dreadnought in power but only the size of a heavy battlecruiser in size.

He'd stolen it, of course. He stole pretty much whatever he wanted, but this was his most famous theft, plucking it right out of the middle of a salarian fleet paralyzed by his innovative software and the simple expedient of putting a nine-part poison in their water supplies. Salarians only thought they were paranoid. Sloppy idiots.

It took some heavy modification of the hull to make it look like an older model turian heavy cruiser, but he had cash to spare. He stole the cash, too. And most of the parts he'd modified the ship with. In fact, he couldn't really say anything on the ship had been bought legitimately except maybe the music collection.

It made him hard to predict. No one could predict what they never knew was coming, and P. knew the best way to run any con game was to distract the eye with what it expected to see.

He was good at fooling the eyes of the galaxy. He had gone mad long ago, and come out the other side of madness into whatever lay beyond it. Clarity, if you could call it that. To see what others didn't see, wouldn't let themselves see. Because life, and everything in it, was an illusion. Or possibly, it was an allusion.

People said a coin had two sides, but that was wrong. It also had an inside and an outside. Everyone knew this...and yet everyone discounted it. Blindness. Ingrained and overlooked. An illusion.

If you were the only one with eyes, the blind could never fathom how you moved. He sighed. It was so boring being the only one with eyes that really saw. He could never explain it to those around him, any more than you could explain how something smelt to a volus, or how the feel of silk across your plates felt to a hanar, or how the sweetness of biting your mate and feeling her mesh to you felt to a human.

Poor, blind little things, fumbling in the darkness. He would have pitied them, except he didn't remember where he'd put pity in his head anymore. Maybe next to dreams, or clouds.

Didn't matter. Never did.

He glanced around his darkened bridge, smiling as the many faces of his children. His ship was commanded by his many asari daughters, although strictly speaking 'daughters' was an inaccurate term. All had sprung from his liaisons with his harem of asari, but the youngest were actually produced from him pleasuring himself with his own offspring.

Some would have called that sick. Given how asari produced, he considered such bonds merely more security. Rules were for those who were ruled. Laws were for people who needed to be told how to live. How could a blind person tell one with sight how to use their eyes?

P.'s mind ran rampant, flying on a dozen different mind-altering substances battling it out in his bloodstream. Drugs to enhance the mind and body, to sharpen the senses and slow time, to shrug off pain and heighten pleasure. A dozen custom bionetic modifications to his tall, rangy frame kept him humming with energy at all times.

He was more than turian, he was the ur-turian, and he would eventually get around to reminding those freak Palavanus the error of their ways. But first, he had to sow lovely, lovely chaos.

He leaned forward in his chair, pushing away the soft, seductive hands of the youngest of his daughters. "And is anyone here to give us a kiss upon the mandible, sweetness, or is it clear to proceed?"

The Daughter at the sensors touched her controls, a wide smile on her features as she looked up. "Clear, Father. And our scout just came through – our transition to Omega is also safe. There's a lot of Aria's ships in system, but tons of the various warlords are there as well."

P. nodded. "And our … tribute from the Broker? Any sign of his ships?"

She nodded. "They say one has docked, and two more are in-system. No sign of anything else … but the system is full of rocks and a ship could easily hide. Or pretend to hide."

"Hmm. Dances and sour notes upon the wind. I am almost in a state of disappointment. I expected an ambush. By the ancestors, the Broker is so _dull_." He smiled. "No matter. Take us in. Slowly, like a lover. Caress the relay. It may be grumpy, having to put up with so much traffic, after all. I know I would be."

Another Daughter looked up. "Should we send in the other ships first?"

P. leaned back, mandibles quivering as yet another Daughter knelt before him, and merely nodded. "Send two...then we'll follow. Have the rest follow in pairs, and escort us in formation." His tapped a control on his chair and the lights in the bridge dimmed further, and his eyes glowed with circles of blue in them.

"We can't afford not to arrive in style, after all."

**O-ATTWN-O**

"Tazzik."

The bridge of the Shadowstrike was more of the Broker's usual depressing taste – bare metal, black armaplast, hard cutting edges, and way too much instrumentation. The lighting was dim with red overtones, every chair was hard metal, and the bridge crew were mostly silent, communicating when they had to through sub-vocalization.

The entire ship was like a tomb, and it creeped Tazzik out. He never liked the way the people in the network had a fixation on black and silence – he personally blamed Tetrimus and his melodramatic ass – and it always irritated him more that the Broker himself acted more like a damned turian than a cunning crime lord sometimes.

It didn't help that every damned ship was named Shadow-something. Not that he was going to say anything to the Broker directly about it – the last fool who'd done so, his predecessor, had been eaten alive as a sign of the Broker's displeasure. And frankly, anything that ate a krogan was nothing he was going to piss off.

He reviewed the status file of the rest of the small fleet headed to Omega again, and then he sighed as he heard his bosses' voice in his comm-link, and tapped his omni-tool. "Here."

"What is your status?" The Broker's voice was quiet, which was usually a good sign.

Tazzik glanced at the status panels across the front of the display he was seated at. He wasn't the captain of the old dreadnought – one of Tetrimus's turians was doing that – but he was tied into the sensors, comms, and other aspects of the ship's systems that would allow him to keep an eye on things, most especially the cargo hold.

"So far, nothing amiss. The cruisers are approaching Omega now, we're running far ahead of schedule for once. The first cruiser is docked and in the process of making sure the docking bay is clean, the other two will dock in half an hour. From the last comm we got from P., a few of his people already lit out for the Citadel to plant the records, and the rest are on their way here. No good ETA yet, but it can't be more than a couple of hours."

"And Aria?"

Tazzik suppressed a sneer. "Still in her strip club, as far as I know. I'd rather not try to get in contact with our few eyes on the station until our people tell me the docking bay is secure, and we still don't know if we got all her bugs or not. But she's got no reason to be suspicious."

The Broker laughed. "Aria is suspicious of everything, Tazzik."

The big salarian grunted. "Maybe so, but that means she's got a lot more on her plate than us just yet. By the time she realizes this egg isn't going to hatch how she expects, it will be too late for her do anything about it."

The Broker's voice was calm. "Very well. Aria's usefulness and power were enough until now that I saw no reason to endanger profits to remove her, but our evacuation from the galaxy will need a vast amount of eezo, and closer proximity to the Collectors should draw their attention here, and away from the area where we build the evacuation ships. You remember the plan?"

Tazzik nodded. "I got it, boss. Everything will happen by the numbers."

The Broker growled. "Do not leave loose ends as you did with Okeer. Aria is unaware of the traitor in her midst. I have procured the services of a Remembrance Dancer, Thane Krios. He will assist when the time comes to remove Aria, but she will not go down easily."

Tazzik frowned. It took him a second to recall the name. "Krios...didn't we kill his wife?"

"And we have information to frame Aria as being behind such killing. P. is a more pressing concern, he will almost certainly attempt treachery. But he is only planning on dealing with you. When the cargo pods are dropped, he will not expect Tetrimus and his backup team on the site – leave the turians to fight each other and focus on securing Shepard's body."

Tazzik nodded. "Got it. Things are going good, we should have this wrapped up quickly. Once we get the signal in, the rest of the ships can jump in. We've already paid the Suns and the Shadows to blow her GTS defense net, and once you make your message, the warlords ships will be too busy fighting each other to mount a defense, not that they will once they see a dreadnought."

"Then proceed. But cautiously. I will contact the Collectors once you report you have the body, and that Aria is neutralized. Broker out."

Tazzik grunted. He didn't need every single thing repeated to him, just because he got carried away in the killing, did he?

**O-ATTWN-O**

Miranda thought everything was going perfectly, up until the point a dozen gunships with Aria's sigil blew the shit out of the cars in front of them and surrounded the truck.

A hard batarian voice crossed the commlink of the truck. "Aria T'Loak, Queen of Omega, will speak with you. Follow the gunships or you will be shot out of the sky and your ship detonated."

Miranda swore, and glanced at Krios, who was driving. "Options?"

Krios gazed outside the thick, somewhat dirty windows of the truck before giving a faint shrug. "None. The vehicle is not armed and all of the gunships are out of the range of the explosive radius of the bomb. Also, I see the station GTS array is now pointing at us. We will have to comply."

She nodded, coming the rest of the team. "Stand by...Aria is forcing us to land. Helmets on, everyone."

They came in on a secluded, thick section of the structural bracing that jutted out from the main mass of the bulk of Omega, which had a series of spiral-edged landing pads around a tall spire-like building, bristling with transmission equipment. A handful of asari in green jumpsuits stood around, more spilling from the building, each one holding weapons or a warp sword

As the truck landed, a pair of elongated air-cars came in.

The first aircar touched down first, black and with visible weapons mounted to the hood, splitting open to reveal what looked like a very large krogan in some kind of powered armor. A heavy helmet covered his features, with thick transparent tubes of some kind running to a pack on his back. Reddish gasses swirled in the tubes. It stood, twitching, and then slowly pulled a salarian BRKR cannon from out of the car, holding it pointed vaguely in their direction.

As they all disembarked, Aethyta swore quietly. "Not good."

Leng stared at the thing, tilting his head. "Of course it isn't good. It is holding a railgun on us."

Aethyta exhaled. "It's also a crazed krogan, who's been flying on red sand for about a hundred years. Aria's enforcer, and about as stable as Sederis was mentally."

Pel sighed. "This shit just gets better and better..."

The other aircar, more elegant and done in faded purples and delicate white, landed smoothly, the doors scissoring open and the figure of Aria T'Loak stepping out.

She wore the tight leather pants of a commando, along with a bodysuit made of stripes that barely covered her tightly-muscled stomach. Her small white vest and more black straps struggled to contain her breasts, and her pale purple skin-tone was enhanced by the faint ritual marks on her face.

She walked towards the group, and Krios bowed. "We have landed, as you requested."

Aria's eyes flicked over the group. "So you have. Wise of you, Dancer. Would you care to explain why you are on my station without my leave? I know you don't work for the Shifter...and given I see aliens, you aren't Cerberus either."

Miranda was about to speak when Aethyta stepped forward and took off her helmet. "Hi to you too, kid."

Aria was not used to being surprised, but the faintest flicker of it crossed her eyes before she gave a thin, calculating smile. "Matriarch Aethyta. I did not expect to see you here."

Aethyta shrugged. "Yeah, well, you know how it is. I've never had a mass orgy before, so I decided to branch out and try knew things – you know, mix it up a little. Never banged a Dancer before. We were headed to Afterlife for some crest gel, nose candy and drinks before getting started."

Aria shook her head. "You do not think I will believe that, do you? You are on a truck full of explosive and headed to Afterlife. Or you were. I can draw my own conclusions."

Aethyta sighed. "And here I was thinking your mom at least gave you something under the crest. Do you honestly think if I wanted to kill you I'd do it this way? I might as well have put up a Goddess-damned flag reading 'Kill me' if that was my intent."

Aria tilted her head. "No. But whatever you are here for is my business. Everything on Omega is my business. And until I know that you aren't going to interfere with my business...I have no reason to let you walk away alive."

Miranda wanted to scream in frustration. "Ms. T'Loak, we – "

Aria held up a hand. "The next time one of them besides Aethyta or the Dancer speaks, kill them."

The asari surrounding them lifted their weapons, and Miranda snapped her jaw shut. Aethyta laughed. "Still a hard-ass, I see."

Aria narrowed her eyes. "Tell me why you are here."

Aethyta folded her arms. "Go fuck yourself, or better yet, one of your dancers."

Bray had seen a lot of things in his life. He'd seen brave turians quiver and piss themselves facing even a hint of Aria's anger. He'd seen the most powerful criminals and killers pause to find the right words to not engage that anger. Hell, even the fucking Citadel Council didn't willingly piss Aria off.

He had never, even from Sederis, heard anything like someone telling her to go fuck herself, and he waited for Aria to tell him to shoot them all dead. Killing a Dancer would be dicey, and he had no idea where the other three Dancers were, or how good there rest of Aethyta's companions were...

A long moment passed, and then Aria threw back her head and laughed, real laughter that made her whole body shake. "Oh, Goddess, I'd forgotten how much of a bitch you were, Aethyta. I see your spine is still made of pure steel. But what part of your brain has decayed to the point where you think I was asking?"

Aethyta smirked. "I'd say the same thing – what part of yours rotted away to make you think your shitty gunships, pet krogan and jumped up Eclipse girls can kill me before I gut you with my warp sword?

Another glare from Aria, and Aethyta smirked. "But since you asked, kiddo, we're not here for you, no matter how much you want to imagine the galaxy rotates around your shit. I was coming to explain why we needed you to look the other way while I remind the Broker not to fuck with me or my family."

Aria glanced at the rest of the group, eyes narrowing. "Explain. And quickly, my patience and time are both valuable and limited."

Aethyta shook her head. "Oh, come on. You're a smart girl, you probably figured out part of why I'm here. P is selling Shepard's corpse to the Broker, and Shepard was married to my daughter. So I'm a bit offended. I'm going to go in, kill whoever gets in my fucking way, and take the body with me when I leave."

Aria glanced aside as Bray. "Selling the corpse of a Spectre. Did the Broker mention this in our talks?"

Bray shook his head. "He didn't, nor did P."

Aria's eyes narrowed. "They didn't mention any salvage they would have found in my territory either. How exactly did this little fact slip your spies, Bray?"

The batarian said nothing, and Aethyta smirked. "Oh, they forgot the first rule of Omega? Well, I didn't. I won't fuck with your people if you just stay the fuck out of the way. I'd ask you to help...but I know you won't get involved without being paid."

Aria said nothing for long seconds, eyes flicking back and forth. Garrus itched to draw his assault rifle. Tali found herself shaking. Telanya was looking on in terror. Shields was still, but clearly ready to roll to cover.

Pel yawned. Kai Leng merely stood, almost as stock still as Krios was standing, his body ready to move to fight or flee as needed.

Aria smiled coldly. "I could just have you all shot and give you to the Broker."

Aethyta smiled back. "Babygirl, no matter how bad you think you are, you aren't bad enough to stop one of us from killing you. That's your biggest problem, kiddo. You always got to showboat and dance on the water. We're not the ones pissing in your pool. So either try it, or get fucking lost."

Aria's eyes narrowed further. "No one orders me on Omega. I am Omega."

Aethyta shrugged. "What was it you told me last time? Omega doesn't care about me? Well I don't care about Omega." Her voice softened. "You're pissed the Broker did an end-around on you. No matter how you slice it, somebody will find out about Shepard being sold, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out who is going to get tossed to the relli's. If you try to stop this mess, you'll be … involved."

Aethyta folded her arms. "If we do it, well...what did Thana always say? Oh. 'Bad things sometimes happen to bad people for good reasons.' Wise words."

Aria trembled with anger, although Miranda didn't know why, and then went still. A sweet smile crossed her features. "You are absolutely right, Matriarch. But then again, I could still go in and take the body, and sell it to the Alliance myself. Spin a tale of ugly betrayal and all that."

Miranda glanced at Pel, sub-vocalizing. "If this gets nasty – "

Pel answered her quickly. "- then we're fucking dead. Gunships will shoot the shit out of us in about a second. Krogan-boy will probably kill us even faster than that."

Aethyta held up one of her armored gauntlets, inspecting the fingers. "If you think you can do it and walk away alive, feel free. But you're forgetting something."

Aria's smile widened. "And what is that?"

Aethyta jerked a thumb towards Krios. "My friend here came with three other Remembrance Dancers. And I'm betting tall, dumb and four-eyed over there hasn't the first tide-bound clue where they are, does he? Go ahead. Shoot us dead. When P. finds your corpse – or whatever the Dancers leave behind of your body – he'll probably burn your couch before pissing on your ashes."

Her smile widened. "I'm not fucking with you, Aria. You, of all people, should understand a mother's rage at losing a child. So what's it going to be?"

Aria said nothing for long seconds, and finally Bray spoke. "Your orders?"

She glanced at him, then back at Aethyta. Finally she spoke. "You may go. If your people are successful...we'll see what to do with you then."

Krios bowed, and Aethyta just put her helmet back on. "Thanks, I guess. Don't get me wrong, Aria – any other day and I'd play your silly little games. If all the people who actually might get my respect, you're near the top. But I'm probably not walking away from this shit alive no matter what happens, so pissing you off is the last of my concerns right now."

Aria gestured, and Bray and the asari guards backed away. "I know. It's the main reason I'm letting you go. I'm going to see if you can still fight worth a damn."

Aria watched as the group got back into their truck, now headed towards the mid-rim docking area. Bray spent a few minutes speaking with the Old One, who roared in displeasure that there was no fight and stomped back to his aircar, and then slowly walked up to Aria, who had a strange look on her face.

He would have said she looked sad, but that was quite possibly the stupidest thought that had ever crossed his mind, and he purged it before could burst out laughing. Instead he merely folded his arms. "Was that wise, letting them go?"

Aria languidly waved a hand. "That shouldn't be your concern right now. The Broker and P. are pulling a fast one on me, in my own fucking station, and seem to think they can get away with it. There is no good reason for them to think I won't find out, and that means they don't plan for me to be able to object."

She turned to face him. "When the ships get here, don't let any of them within the secondary radius of the GTS defenses. And have Varthok bring ALL his heavy cruisers in behind them. Don't let them bring in more than twenty people each. And have the Old One at Afterlife with my double. I'll be in the lockdown quad."

Bray's eyes narrowed. "You think the Broker or P. would move against you? Why?"

Aria exhaled. "You don't know how Aethyta's mind works. She quoted … Thana T'Armal. The quote was about someone who had died, in a deal gone wrong."

Aria paused. "A deal with Collectors."

Bray winced. He didn't know why Aria had such dislike for the creepy bugs, but she did. And they were well known for having powerful technology, and being very hard to kill. His mind darted around several possibilities, but whatever the Broker was planning, it wasn't going to work. "I'll get the girls mobilized then, and maybe toss some orders to Tarek and Garm."

She turned and headed back to her aircar. "Good. Don't contact me directly again until this is … resolved." She paused at the aircar, one shapely leg braced against the door-frame, and turned to glance at him.

"And if you have the chance, when it's all over, go ahead and kill Aethyta and her little band. No one tells me to go fuck myself."

**O-ATTWN-O**

"So, Aethyta. Do you enjoy pissing off powerful Traverse warlords to their faces, or do you just have some kind of death wish? Because the rest of us would very much like to get out of this alive and with at least the majority of our limbs attached." Garrus's voice was wry and Aethyta laughed as the transport headed upwards along Omega's traffic lanes.

"Aria doesn't tolerate weakness, Vakarian. She tends to see everything as a threat to her power, a scheme to topple her from her throne. To her, anyone and everyone is a dagger in the back. A weak threat is eliminated, a strong one parried and redirected to another target."

Garrus exhaled. "I begin to see why this is such a shithole of a place to live."

Aethyta shrugged. "She doesn't care about these people...and yet, she protects them, sometimes. She was messed up a long time ago, and she's hateful because she knows the only reason she has power is someone else's weakness."

Garrus frowned. "I don't understand."

The matriarch gave him a sad look. "Pray to your spirits you never do, kiddo. Aria … used to be a bright, shining star. A gentle soul like Uressa T'Shora. But when shit went bad for her, the people she loved the most turned on her." She gave a grim, thin smile. "She never forgot that. And now she resents the universe."

Garrus shook his head. "For what? For being betrayed?"

Aethyta said nothing for a long moment, then her smile stiffened. "For being born, maybe." She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I know how she thinks. If we give her a chance she'll kill us, but she's really only pissed at me. If whoever planned this gig had been thinking, they would have paid her off to allow us onboard, but then she would have freaked out at the Dancers."

She glanced sidelong at Pel and Kai. "And just how in shit did you get a hold of even one Remembrance Dancer anyway?"

Pel shrugged. "Broker offed the guy's wife for some bullshit. Bossman found out about it and shot him the info, in trade for having someone taken out. Why he's going along with this crazy bullshit, I don't know. I ain't big on talking with people who could kill you before you can fucking move."

The big man adjusted his position. "Besides...we're here to pick up a busted up corpse, for no reason I was told aside from pissing in the Broker's eye. Pardon me if I ain't overwhelmed at chatting around when I could be dead in a few hours."

Liara was seated in the corner, trying not to fall to pieces all over again. Hearing Pel talk so coldly about Sara's body had driven home once again the possibility this was all pointless, that Sara was dead and all they would find in wherever they were headed was a ravaged, shattered pile of flesh. That someone could die. That many of them could die.

She swallowed, jerking slightly as Telanya sat down next to her and handed her a glass of water. "You look … tired, Lady Liara. And drained. Some water will make you feel better, maybe."

Liara had taken off her helmet when she'd gotten back on the transport, and tried for a smile as she took the water. "Thank you, Telanya. I am …" She lifted the glass and tried to stifle the shaking of her hands as she drank.

A flash of memory hit her, of Shepard handing her a canteen of water on Therum, dark eyes watching her raptly and with concern and worry, and she felt fresh tears. She pushed it down and drank again, gripping hard at her shredded resolve.

"...I am just a bit tired, that is all. You are kind to worry about me, but I will endure."

Telanya stared at the ugly black decking between her feet, and gave a soft sigh. "I have tried to imagine what I would do if Garrus was killed. How I would react. Or feel. I can only see myself collapsing, unable to … anything. Even the idea is enough to make me shake with despair. How … how do you go on?"

Liara's trembling smile turned bleak and hard. "You do not. There is nothing to go on to. I have one vague, unlikely hope – a glimmer, that is all." Her fist clenched. "And if that is taken from me, then all I have …" She trailed off.

Telanya waited several seconds, and then stepped away. Liara lowered her head, emotions colliding inside her soul, before forcefully clearing her mind.

_Athame. I have never prayed to you, as many of my kind do. I suppose I had no time or need to do so, blind as I was to the world around me, and what true loss and suffering were._

She glanced around the small transport. At Tali, nervously checking her shotgun, probably worried about Jeff. At Garrus, now gently stroking Telanya's back. At her aithntar, once again chatting quietly with the two humans from Cerberus. She could make out the edge of the red robe Krios wore, and the shrill edge of Miranda's voice.

She closed her eyes. _I know you do not judge us. That our ascendance to beyond is not a matter if we follow or fight the tides. No one, not even you, will remember in the end if we embraced the darkness or fought it, if we were good or bad people. Why we loved or hated, why we laughed or danced, or even why we died._

A tear fell, trailing down her cheek, and she wiped it away. _No, all that matters to you is that Light did not quail or falter against the Darkness, no matter how vast it seemed. That is all that is important to you. I cannot find it, in what is left of my soul, to embrace that Light, and I am sorry._

_And yet I beg one thing of you, because my mother told me that once you were also a goddess of endings. I do not beg you for my Sara's life, as I know you cannot return that to me which is gone. I do not beg for you to heal my pain, because it is the only way I can remember the things I love about Sara._

_I ask only that you grant me one thing, and I will try as I can to embrace your Light, for however long I live._

_Grant me revenge!_

She trembled, more tears falling from her eyes.

_And if you will not, then to the Abyss with you. _


	38. Chapter 38 : Thirty Gambit Pileup

_**A/N**:  
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_Obligatory note : I didn't spice the battles up as much as usual, because the energy I was aiming for began to drag. But not to worry. You'll get what you wanted in the end.  
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_Reviews are always welcome, be they positive, negative, or derptastic.  
_

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_'The beauty of chaos is in it's sheer economy of time. It is entertainment, suspense, and excitement, wrapped in a package of curiosity and, well, sometimes death. But nothing of value aside from taxes benefits from pure order, after all.'  
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_-The P's Truth, Segment 14,392 - six weeks prior to the Burning of Omega_

* * *

Omega was the kind of place where 'ordinary' routinely included open gang warfare in the street and the sale of merchandise that would make a normal person question their sanity, so for the inhabitants to take note of any particular event was rare, and mostly done by way of simply vacating the area. The main rule of survival was simply not coming to anyone's attention, especially Aria.

Normally, her people were not highly visible in large groups. They accumulated in street corners, or food shops, keeping open eyes and open ears for treachery, but didn't need to show large numbers to cow those around them. Only a fool would give Aria's own guards problems.

So when the street vendors saw six of Aria's twenty-strong security teams converging on the mid-rim docking bay cavern level, everyone else decided this would probably be a good time to venture to another level. Maybe the Old Priest down on the Black Walk had a new sermon about how they were a blight. Or maybe this was actually a good time to head out to somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Bray barely noticed. Things were going to shit, his breakfast wasn't digesting, and he knew something was about to blow up.

Earlier, he'd just been irritated. Bray was more than irritated now. Ships were spilling into the system, far more than expected, and far ahead of schedule. Aria was acting weird, there was some weird group going to start shit with the Broker, and P. was always a headache.

Now he had to ride herd on a crazy drugged up krogan who thought a BRKR cannon was a _sidearm_, and monitor a deal he couldn't see without tipping his hand. He had the distinct feeling this was going to turn into one of those messy situations where everyone thought they had the advantages, someone would mouth off with some stupid kind of melodramatic speech, and then one person would do something stupid.

Then would come the shooting. And the explosions. And the screaming. _Ugh_.

It wouldn't be the first time. Or even the tenth. Another drawback to working for Aria.

"Antos, take your men up to the next level, seal off the access shafts. Garm, have your people move in to cover the main exits from the level to the core. Ysera, take two squads and head to the Tribute Bay – Aria's payment should be arriving shortly, make sure it's secure. Titkos, Mana, Vrenl – cordon the rest of the ring passages. Mahrisa, take your girls and have them set up in hangar 45 – there's five hover platforms there, go ahead and get them warmed up. Everyone else get to hanger 51, and load up in the gunships."

Everyone nodded, except for the massive form of Garm, the nominal leader of the Blood Pack on Omega. "And just where will you be?"

Bray continued to work the sensor panel in front of him. "Coordinating the ships outside and then leading the rest of the girls into the bay where the deal is going down if shit goes wrong. Comm frequency is already set to your omnis, so pay attention. If shit goes bad, just kill everyone in there."

Garm snorted. "You're expecting this to be a trap?"

Bray shrugged. "Only the dead are above suspicion in Aria's eyes. And even then, only after we check the bodies."

**O-ATTWN-O**

P. smiled as the pinnace slid towards the vast docking bay carved out of the bones of Omega. The Broker's people were already here, at least some of them, although they'd at least had the sense to show in regular looking armor and not their usual black-armored uniforms.

The docking bay was built directly into the rock, but only a third of the space was actually for docking. His ship would actually land on the outside of the bay, on a metallic platform, supported by vast struts running below and above the walls. P. didn't want to trap himself inside a box of rock – he needed to be able to get his ship moving at a moment's notice if this turned into a trap that he couldn't disarm.

Below the opening and the metallic platform were irregular shelves of buildings and bare rock, sloping gently outwards and downwards. Thick tubes and pipes ran on either side of the docking area as the pinnace touched down, and he wondered what substances they carried – or if they were even still being used, given their rusted, battered appearance.

His Daughters, in the back, did one final check on the carefully prepared stasis capsule. P. himself was ambivalent about Shepard. She was, in life, an irritation at best, yet another blindly seeking krillworm who, when removed from their usual common dirt and dropped into the more unforgiving soil of galactic events, withered and died.

Still, she'd driven up the price point on slaves a whole five index points for over eight years, so he figured he owed her something, the profits she'd inadvertently made him were worthy of a gesture. When his little act of chaos was finished, assuming the body wasn't destroyed in the crossfire, he'd send it back to the Alliance with a note about meddling in the affairs of their betters.

Or maybe he'd just shoot it into Omega's sun. Humans had some kind of thing about bonfire deaths, didn't they? No no no, that was asari. Didn't see much difference, but there it was.

The pinnace cargo bay door slid open and downwards, splitting away and the center section turning into a loading ramp, and the lift-repulsors on the coffin floated into the air. P. adjusted his coat and walked behind it, his Daughters gently pushing it along. Behind the ten Daughters, he had brought along two of his little experiments, Left and Right. The misshapen creatures, who'd been vorcha once upon a time before cybernetics and gene mods had altered them, shambled along behind his girls, each carrying a lance cannon.

And just in case of really competent ambushes, he'd come himself. He knew something was going to go down, and he was more interested in the chaos than the result. Oh, the payoff from the Broker in terms of credits and intel would be very, very useful – and to be able to spy inside of the secret facilities of the STG even more exciting – but it was just for amusement. The only payment he really wanted was chaos, after all.

He glanced at the battered wreck of a corpse inside the stasis field and sighed. Shepard, poor thing, probably wouldn't have approved of how she was being used. "Tell you what, young lady. I'll make sure I kill some slavers for you on my way out to make it up to you. How about that?"

The corpse didn't' respond, which was a touch disappointing, but not _unexpected_.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Tazzik wasn't precisely nervous. Merely cautious.

The dreadnought was in place. So were the cruisers. The six warlords had been paid off and the bugs into Aria's supposedly secure systems were in place. The Alliance was distracted, the Council was busy with the Batarian problem, and no one would notice a thing.

If P. didn't fuck this up, things would go smoothly. Of course, P. would no doubt fuck things up. But he was ready for that.

The crates of mining equipment promised to Aria and even now headed to the Tribute Bay were no such thing. Oh, there were a few bits and pieces, but the bulk of the metal aboard was actually custom-designed battle-suits, VI driven and slaved to controllers on the Shadowstrike. Along with this, Tetrimus and ten of the most lethal of the Broker's people were also in the shipment, shielded by energy fields from detection.

The plan was anything but simple. Get the body from P. Send the message for the first two minor warlords to start an attack. Convince P. that Aria was going to double cross them. Meanwhile, Aria's shipment would unpack in her docking bay where she got her tribute, unleashing Tetrimus's strike force on her. Have P. deal with Aria's wrath while he cut his own way towards the GTS defenses and the other warlords kept her fleet off.

Once the defenses were down, the dreadnought would put two shots into specially chosen locations that would cripple the stations' power, and more Broker ships would come in. In the chaos, the small ship with Shepard's body would be picked up by the Collectors and removed, and the Broker would then transmit forged video suggesting Aria was planning to crush several gangs on the station.

Without power out, the GTS defenses gone, rioting within, Tetrimus ripping the station apart, and wild fighting on the outside, Aria would be thrown down. The Broker would present this as a fait accompli to the Council, implying that Aria had been somehow involved in the death of Shepard, and that Omega would be cleaned up.

Personally, Tazzik thought the plan was over-complicated, likely to fail at several points, and risky. Then again, from the Broker's point of view, it was win win. Even if they lost, and Aria remained alive, her fleets would be shattered, Omega a wreck, her influence doubted, and her power broken for a long time. The Broker's location was not known to her, and with most of the network more focused on preparing to pull out of the galaxy than events in it, her retribution would only be against those pieces of the network the Broker was going to sacrifice anyway.

More importantly, win or lose, it would make the Council look more at Aria, and less at the Broker. Tazzik just wished he wasn't in the middle of the bullshit. He loved a good fight, and there was bound to be more than one, but he wasn't a fan of being blown apart in a bombardment from a cruiser he couldn't fight back against if this went wrong.

He turned to one of the techs. "Anything on the sensors?"

The male quarian shook his head. "No. The net is quiet. Aria's sensors are blind. P.'s people are already unloading. The tribute ship is docking in Aria's assigned docking bay now, only a few dozen security are there."

He nodded, and ran a final check on his cybernetics and armor, then tapped his omni. "Krios, this is Tazzik. Where are you?"

The cool, dry voice of the drell answered. "Two minutes out. My people are ready."

Tazzik nodded. "Go ahead and head on into the landing bay, then. Aria's saying we can't have more than twenty people, but we've got her sensors blinded. If P. wants to start shit, he's in for a surprise."

"Understood. A question, however: what forces is P. bringing?"

Tazzik grimaced. "Not many, a handful of his girls and a pair of vorcha...but he's going to be at the meet himself. That's why I'm coming in to meet him."

"I see. And your arrival will be soon?"

Tazzik glanced at the status repeater of his transport ship. "Touching down in five minutes."

**O-ATTWN-O**

The truck slowed to a stop, and Miranda frowned. "What's wrong?"

Krios put his hood back up. "I am receiving new orders from the Broker commander. He has instructed us to go ahead, into the actual bay where the deal will go down. I did not expect this."

Miranda frowned. "That's good, right?"

Krios shook his head. "No. P. and Tazzik will both be present, and given that Aria's sensors are blinded, according to Tazzik, there may be more personnel than I expected." He paused. "On the other hand, according to my people, several quarians are present. So Ms. Zorah can accompany us inside...her skills may be useful at some point."

Miranda nodded. "One more gun never hurt" She sighed, tapping her omni. "Joker, this is Miranda, what is your status?"

The voice of the pilot sounded bored. "Everything is quiet. Well, mostly. There's a LOT of ships moving around, and a big pack of ships jumped in about ten minutes ago. But the docking ring itself is pretty dead."

She nodded. "Based on our location, how long would it take you to undock and get here?"

She heard the beeping from a haptic console, then he answered. "About four minutes. Assuming no one shoots me up."

She smiled. "There is a panel on the back wall of the cockpit labeled secondary power. The main power switch for that console actually activates a salarian photonic cloak. It will not shield your engine output or magnetic resonance, but it will make your ship invisible to the naked eye or visual camera pickups. When I call for you, trigger it, then head to the hangar bay next to the one I'm flagging on your system map."

Joker's voice sounded dubious. "Oookay. And what if missiles end up chasing me? Because I don't think this place likes dock skips."

Miranda wished Harper had let her choose a different pilot. "Then use your supposedly excellent piloting skills and evade the missile. Keep your comms open. Miranda out."

She huffed, then turned to Krios. "We planned to blow the truck as a distraction. Where should we park it?"

Krios gestured to the heavy power conduits running along the wall in the corridor. "That is why we stopped here. Let us walk to the site of the meeting. I will lead. My people are nearby but will not show themselves just yet."

She nodded, getting up and heading into the bay of the truck. "Everyone get ready, helmets on, and no one talks but Mr. Krios. The deal is going down very soon...and both P. and Tazzik will be there."

She glanced around as helmets were put on and weapons readied. Before she could continue, though, Liara spoke.

"I want to thank you, Garrus, Telanya, Tali. For coming and risking your lives on this. You did not have to do so."

Garrus grunted, lifting his Phaeston. "Nonsense. If the Broker and his goons are responsible for Shepard's death, then they need to be exposed and arrested."

Pel snorted. "You gonna walk in and say this is a sting?"

Garrus shrugged. "No. I said they need to be. I'll settle for killing them, this once."

Miranda folded her arms. "Yes, well. We need less talking and more moving. Kai, Pel, flank Krios. Vakarian, take a rearguard position, with your sniper rifle. The rest of us will move behind Krios."

They filed out of the truck, the wide corridor that ran between the circular arrangement of docking bays dug into the rock polished smooth by years of traffic. Faded haptic posters were spattered over the walls here and there, but there were hardly any people except a line of Aria's goons, leaning against the far wall near the docking bay entrance.

Krios gestured, and the group fell in behind him. He walked with a graceful, easy step, and as the asari and turians realized what they were seeing, they became nervous. One, a heavyset batarian, finally stepped forward just as they were at the entry portal.

"Aria said only twenty people. You with the Broker or P.?"

Krios's voice was soft, but still dangerous sounding. "We are associates of the Broker here to ensure there are not any complications in this transfer."

The batarian glanced at the asari next to him. "I, uh..."

Krios tilted his cowled head. "Is there a problem, Cera Gufthak?"

The batarian's face paled. "H-how do you know my name?"

Krios's voice almost sounded amused. "The Broker knows a great many things. If you have no other questions, we will proceed."

The asari next to the batarian glanced over their team and shook her head, stepping back, and the batarian nodded. "Uh. Yes. Of course."

Krios tapped his omni, and the heavy entry portal slid open, revealing a standard airlock room. They filed in, the heavy door shutting behind them, and the far door opening almost in tandem.

The bay beyond was broad – probably over a hundred feet wide, and twice that in length, not including the two hundred or so feet of the outer landing pad. Much of the space inside the bay itself was taken up by refueling equipment, cargo modules and mass-assisted cranes.

Krios walked forward, the group trailing, Kai and Pel to either side of him. The overhead of the cavernous bay was supported by heavy, rusting beams of curved shapes, and bright lights here and there threw stark shadows into many corners and behind cargo modules scattered about.

Ahead, a garish asari pinnace squatted on the landing pad, bright gold with white trim, with its cargo bay doors split open and a ramp leading from the ship to the ground. A knot of asari in filmy long coats and wearing very little else besides gun-belts and other weapons surrounded a tall turian dressed in black leather, with black facial paint and a single pink sigil above his eyes.

To either side of the big turian were what looked like mutated, cybered-up vorcha, each one walking in a hunch, cradling the bulky forms of lance cannons as if they were beloved children rather than lethal weapons. And behind them...

Liara managed not to gasp as the sight of a long stasis chamber, the visible surface opaque with swirling energy.

Walking towards this group from the other end of the landing pad was the biggest salarian any of them had ever seen. Dressed head to foot in thick black armor with various cybernetic attachments, the salarian was not just tall but much thicker and tougher looking than others of his kind. Behind him were a small group of black-armored turians and a pair of quarians, dressed much as most of Krios's group was.

Krios gestured and the group kept walking, even as another knot of P.'s asari stepped out of the shadows of a nearby shipping crate. They all walked to the center of the docking bay, and Garrus flinched when the figure of P. looked over the group.

The turian crime lord looked hard at Krios, who pulled back his cowl and gave a respectful nod, and then at Tazzik. "A Dancer? I'm impressed."

Tazzik shouldered his heavy rifle, his salarian features expressionless. "We don't want interference, and the Broker had intel suggesting Aria might try and disrupt this little party we're having."

P.'s voice dipped an octave. "Aria, eh? That's strange. She told my people that she was worried you would be trying something. Like perhaps cheating us."

Tazzik gestured to the turian next to him, who knelt and popped open the case he was carrying. Even Liara had to suppress her gasp at the amount of eezo stuffed in it, all pure and refined. "We have no plans to do anything of the sort. The eezo is here. So are the files you wanted, and the turian girl. Well, on the ship."

P. tilted his head, then gestured himself, and his Daughters stepped away from the stasis coffin. "And we have here one freshly dead human Spectre. Plus, if you order now, we'll toss in a handbook of all her best weapon designs, personal thoughts, and sketches of some naked asari girl. All for the low, low price of sixty million credits. Plus shipping and handling."

Tazzik looked confused, but nodded. "That's...an interesting bonus. Is she intact?"

P. smiled. "Oh, well. For most definitions of intact that you would apply to, say, modern art. She's missing part of an arm and most of a leg, but she froze solid and probably was dead before she hit the ground."

Liara trembled and Aethyta cautiously, slowly squeezed her shoulder. No one seemed to notice except Garrus, who subtly shifted his position to block the view P. and Tazzik might have had of Liara.

Tazzik nodded. "Alright then. We –"

He broke off as a mass accelerator round tore through the black-armored ship he'd landed in, smashing the burning wreckage off of the landing pad to tumble out into the distant void below. Everyone pulled out weapons and scrambled for cover. Two more rounds sailed in, one smashing against the side of the docking bay, crushing two of the Broker's people under crumbling rock and weakening one of the bay support struts. The other impacted near P's pinnace, smashing his pet vorcha into steaming red paste and chunks of cyberware.

P. sighed. "That was...bad."

Tazzik snarled."What in the name of the Collapse is going on?

P.'s voice lifted in a shout. "Well, I'm assuming that you didn't shoot your own ship..." His daughters were hustling the stasis pod back towards the pinnace, and Tazzik shook his head. "Then your assertion about Aria was right. It's a double cross. Delicious."

Tazzik cursed, the plan had been to get the body FIRST, then blow things up. Fucking idiots had already messed things up. "It's very possible we've been betrayed – but I still need the body."

P. considered this as information came into his commlink. "Ships are shooting each other outside the station, and a bomb just went off in customs. I think a better and safe trade spot can be worked out another time."

Tazzik hesitated, but then nodded. "Fine. We'll comm you once we're both secure."

Krios glanced at Miranda, who tapped her omni. An explosion shook the bay as power went out through the entire docking area, as the truck full of explosives went up. Sparks exploded from overhead as the security systems went down, and the entire landing pad trembled and shook, knocking more than a few people to their knees. Curses rang out as few people had low-light gear.

Liara blinked, as Krios was already halfway towards Tazzik, and Kai and Aethyta were already moving. The small group of P's people that were nearby and off to one side didn't even have a chance as Pel and Shields opened up on them, firing rapidly with short bursts at legs and heads.

Tazzik barely dodged Krios' first strike, dancing back as the drell slammed a biotic kick into the turian still clutching the case of eezo. The turian died instantly, and a bolt of biotic fire slashed into the next one to him. Tazzik triggered his armor, roaring. "Krios what are you doing?"

Krios flung a bolt of blue energy at P., and the turian froze, struggling against some kind of biotic hold. Krios's voice was cool. "Irikah was my wife, Tazzik. Did you think I would not find out Tetrimus killed her?" The drell seemed to blur as he spun out of the way of the hasty shot taken by a Broker soldier, a knife wrapped in biotic energy flying from his hands to strike the turian attacker in the throat and send him skidding across the smooth decking, trailing spurts of cobalt blood.

He evaded Tazzik's next shot, but the salarian threw his heavy rifle at him after the miss, forcing him to leap over it.

As he was coming down, the massive fist of the Broker enforcer crunched into his ribs, slamming him to the ground. Without the Dancer pinning him in place, P. leapt up and away, and Miranda gestured. "Stop the tube!"

Aethyta exploded into the kanquess after latching onto Kai Leng, and they came out between P. and his Daughters. The crime lord pulled up short, talons snapping out, and the Aethyta rolled left as Kai came to his right, both drawing their swords. P. only grinned.

"Ooh, double penetration. Now, keep the dance beat going and don't fall behind, sweetlings." He moved almost faster than the eye could follow, lashing out with claws suddenly lit with glittering blue energy, and Kai barely evaded the first blow, parrying and side-stepping.

Aethyta came forward in a full extension lunge, but the turian's other arm came up, and the warp blade skittered off a glowing omni-shield, as P's lunatic grin widened.

"Nope."

Miranda flung a biotic throw at the small knot of Daughters near the stasis tube, gesturing. "Pel, get them to the tube and secure it!" Even as she spoke more the Broker's people opened fire, straining her barrier and then breaking it. She tucked herself behind a cargo module, cursing as she gripped her shoulder.

The burly soldier put another burst into the last of P's backup and broke into a run, Garrus, Tali, and Liara following. More of P's and the Broker's people began firing, but then screamed as three red cloaked forms dropped from above, hands glowing with biotics, and what was six people turned into six wreckages of blood and viscera in a split second.

The fight was short and ugly – one of the Dancers killed two more of the Broker's goons, then a headshot from behind took him down. The other two split up with biotic acrobatics, dodging wild sprays of fire at their half-glimpsed forms in mid-air, throwing throws and shockwaves to sow confusion.

Liara's heart pounded as she flung her own warp, burning down an asari trying to take cover behind the stasis tube. Garrus dropped to one knee, aiming with his sniper, and then fired, a shot lancing out and striking another Daughter in the leg, making her stagger. Tali used that to put a burst from her submachine gun into the asari's chest.

Three more Daughters lunged forward, placing themselves between the stasis container and the oncoming force, screaming and flinging biotic attacks as they ran. Pel tumbled onto a shoulder, evading a lance of warpfire, and came up in a roll, scattering short bursts and catching two of the asari with leg shots. One of them had a barrier strong enough to resist, the other did not, and she fell, one leg sporting a handful of gory craters that bled profusely.

The darkness of the cavern was lit only by the faint glow of omni-armor, and flashes of light outside as chaos descended.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Aria was displeased.

Two warlords – batarian thugs, swollen now with numbers from their kind fleeing the Hegemony – were attacking a third, for no reason she could see. Now three more were getting into the fight, and comms were being jammed between the fleets.

More Broker ships were erupting from the asteroids, and explosions were going off in critical areas. She'd lost all contact with the Tribute bay, only panicked screaming and the words 'Dagger, dagger' sounding across the commlink.

Bray had gone down there five minutes ago and she'd not heard from him since. Alerts flared in the central GTS command center of attackers, so she had quietly transferred all GTS controls to her consoles here, in her secret redoubt.

Aria had known on some level something was coming, but she was furious at herself for missing this mess. The ship battle outside was dragging her own people into it, and if this kept up and no one could get them to stop fighting thing would get very bad even if she kept the defenses up.

So when her best hacker, an exile quarian female named Quala'Vaas, came up to her with a cringing stance, she knew the news was going to be bad. "What?"

The quarian bowed. "Mistress...there is a signal being broadcast to several warlords...and some of the gangs on the station. It's the Broker claiming you were planning to sell them out to the bigger warlords and take their ships or territory for your own. There's...video of you talking about it with Sederis."

Aria clenched her fist. "Sederis is on fucking Tuchanka!"

The quarian cringed. "Yes, mistress. But people are believing this – "

Aria turned slowly to face the quarian. "Then shut it down. Now."

With a sigh and despairing eyes, Quala'Vaas looked up. "I.. I've tried. I can't. I can maybe override the internal signals going to the station vidscreens, but not the outgoing comms. Whoever is doing this is too good, and they're in the hardlines. The only way to kill it is blow up the signal comms stations."

Aria's eyes narrowed. If she did that, she'd have no way to contact the fleets and get the fighting to stop, or even coordinate the other warlords. She grimaced. "Can we still transmit out?"

The quarian nodded, and Aria relaxed slightly. "Then transmit this. Use my stock avatar footage. Any ships approaching the station will be shot down by the GTS defenses. The transmission by the Broker is a lie, he is plotting against me. Those ships who destroy the warlords Vath and M'lrok will be rewarded, those who do not will be destroyed." She smiled. "After that, blow the transmit equipment, and kill that damned signal going out inside the station."

The quarian scurried off, and Aria frowned as her omni-tool lit up. Why would Bray use the emergency channel at a time like this? "Bray, this had better be good news."

The batarian sounded strangely tired, his voice quiet and wracked by coughing. "Aria...Tetrimus was in the Tribute Bay. I'm down half my people, and I'm … barely alive. He's headed straight for GTS controls."

Aria laughed. "Let him, the fool. It's a giant trap now. I've already shifted position to the holdfast."

The voice suddenly changed, becoming a cold, raspy chuckle. "So I see, Aria. Bad omni-tool discipline. But then again, arrogance was always your greatest conceit. See you soon."

Aria recognized that voice. Tetrimus. She killed the omni-tool link, and then turned to her security adviser. "Lock this place down. Put everyone into defense plan A, and get my commandos moving."

She balled her fists and took three slow, calming breaths. People had tried to usurp her before. By the Five Oceans, the Broker from two centuries ago had tried. She'd survived that, and she would survive this. But it would cripple her power. Delay and slow her rise.

Was this really a Broker gambit, or was he being paid off by the Council? She didn't know. For now, she had to get ready to fight Tetrimus if he got here, and that would be .. messy.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Omega was burning.

Messages and counter-messages went out. Some of the gangs backed Aria – the Talons, Eclipse, the Blue Suns all did. The Blood Pack split, the chieftain Tulm challenging Garm and the two going at it in the middle of all out war, for dominance. Some Blood Pack fought Aria's people, others went after older enemies.

The Twelve Bells, long having been suborned by P, decided their best plan was to just blow things up and blame it on other gangs, and started by detonating a secondary fusion reactor feeding life support for almost six thousand people in the lowest reaches of Omega, planting tags and signs that this was done by the Shadows. The Shadows were busy using the distraction to try to hack and raid other gangs computers, and that of Aria, and were caught off guard when the Blue Suns attacked their HQ.

People sealed themselves in their homes as the GTS defenses kicked off, as the quarreling warlords outside split down the middle. The five batarian warlords had always resented Aria's power, and the two asari ones felt she was a jumped up failed commando. The five turian warlords were equally split, three claiming loyalty to Aria, and two to P.

The pair of human warlords normally would have sided with P. But they'd received a tempting offer from a third party, one offering cash and resources if they would take a very different action in the conflict, and thus they simply said they were waiting – while moving to block the Broker's ships approaching the station.

The battle in space was ugly, as there were no clear lines of battle or set barriers. ECM systems snarled against each other as thousands of accelerator rounds tore through space. Hundreds of these missed, most impacting the rocky sections of Omega, but dozens hit the inhabited areas, blasting tens of thousands of people to instant death.

Independent traders fled in all directions, transmitting panicked pleas of non-involvement. Rich and powerful slavers kept their ships docked and instead brought up their kinetic shields and put armed men at the entrances to the docks.

Omega was burning. No one noticed a single cloaked ship drop from its dock slot, slipping into the heavy shadows of a under-tower as it ascended the vast arcs of Omega's lower half.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Tetrimus was halfway towards the estimated position of Aria from his hasty trace of her omni-tool transmission when an alert on his omni-tool went off. He frowned, his black cloak billowing as his handpicked group continued to walk down the now-abandoned corridors, the automated VI-driven battle armor clambering along the connecting struts towards the hardlines to the GTS defenses.

Taking down Aria was proving a touch harder than he expected, and he didn't need complications. But the alert on his omni was from Tazzik, and it was non-verbal – an emergency code.

He exhaled. Trust that hot-fringed fool to fuck up a simple task like picking up a dead body. He turned to his lieutenant. "Continue the assault. Corner Aria, mark her location, but do not engage. Once I've dealt with whatever Tazzik has broken his talons on now, I'll return so we can finish."

He strode away from the group, triggering his cloak before tapping a control on his omni. The docking bay wasn't but a few minutes away, if he was swift, this wouldn't even throw off his timetable any. He lightened his weight using his biotics and began to run.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The fight in the docking bay had gone from complete chaos to a disorganized melee where everyone was shooting everyone. At some point, some of Aria's people stormed in, and were shot by the Broker's people. Most of the fallen were asari, and in the bad lighting, some of P.'s daughters assumed this meant that the Broker had turned on them. A nasty little firefight between the two groups had ended up with most of both sides dead.

The small group of Daughters near the capsule had fallen to the relentless fire of Pel and the rest of the group, but the human had taken several shots and was limping badly, leaning against the stasis tube. Garrus had been separated from the rest of the group, forced further and further back by an aggressive pair of Daughters with shotguns, and was now clambering up high on the far wall of the bay, moving from gantry to gantry and sniping where he could make out the target.

The stasis tube had its own drive mechanism, but it was code-locked. Tali quickly discovered it wasn't even going to be movable without unlocking it, and any damage to the unit would probably scramble the stasis field and turn whatever was left of Shepard to paste.

Liara, Miranda and Telanya covered Tali'Zorah while she tried to hack it, the two asari using biotics to drag crates and other bits of cover into a rough semicircle around them. The asari C-SEC officer had been hit twice already, once in the leg and once by a glancing ricochet to the temple, blood streaming down her face and making her grip shaky on her rifle. She kept shooting worried looks after the direction Garrus had headed off in, barely able to feel him.

Shields was off on her own, pinned by a handful of Broker soldiers, firing calmly and moving from cover to cover with cool dispatch. Her cybernetics let her see in the almost pitch blackness just fine, and she was killing the group one by one, never exposing herself to counter-fire if she could avoid it.

Liara was using every trick Ahern taught her, and kept her gun in shotgun mode, combined with shockwaves, to keep charging attackers at a distance. Miranda fired her pistol and used an occasional throw, but the shoulder wound she had taken was sapping her strength, and blood was still leaking from the medigel patch she'd thrown over it.

Aethyta , Kai Leng and P. were in a crazed maelstrom of flickering moves, accompanied by the hysterical ringing laughter of P. as he fended them both off. He'd been hurt – cuts littered his flapping black coat, blue blood spattered his torso – but was only moving faster with each strike, howling in ecstasy. His talons had laid out Aethyta's right shoulder to the bone, and lashed Kai's left thigh and right arm in more than one place, and the three circled warily, waiting for the first mistake.

The last two Dancers had wrought terrible carnage on the Broker's people, killing almost all of them before being taken down the simple expedient of being swarmed under and dying to grenades detonated at point blank range. Krios was alive, barely – only his speed and evasiveness had kept him in the fight against Tazzik so far. Despite several brutal biotic attacks and a sneaky use of a detpak, the cybernetic salarian kept coming.

It only took one mistake, and it was made by the Daughters chasing Garrus. Having lost sight of him in a jumble of stacked cargo boxes and pallets, they decided to bring the entire thing down by using biotics, flinging the base of the towering stack apart.

Garrus, however, had leapt across, to one of the rusted pipes lining the walls, grabbing onto a narrow catwalk and levering himself up. As the two Daughters lit themselves up with biotic power, he smiled grimly and sighted on the first one, firing a second later.

She didn't even have time to scream as her head came apart in the blast, and the other Daughter was splashed with her hot blood, purple marks on her light blue skin. As she turned, Garrus retargeted and fired, hitting the second Daughter right in the heart, sending her to the ground.

He exhaled, tapping vision modes on his visor to bring up infrared, and glanced over the bay. He could hear fighting going on in the corridor outside, but the doors were still sealed. Between the chaos of the fight, the Dancers, Shields careful shooting and Pel's nasty aiming, most of P's and the Broker's solders were dead.

He sighted in first on the last few Daughters going after the group of his friends by the stasis tube. He dropped two before they realized they were being sniped, and tried to scatter for cover. Liara lashed out with a singularity, pulling several of them from the floor and making the rest stumble, and Miranda and Telanya took advantage, firing rapidly.

Garrus put a shot into a helplessly tumbling asari, then a second one into a Broker goon. As he did so, he heard a hiss of agony and saw Kai Leng stumble back, his sword slipping from his grasp as P's talons broke his guard.

Aethyta hurled a push to step him back, but the crime lord merely rolled backwards with it. As he came up, his hand pulled free a powerful looking handgun from his now shredded coat and fired twice, the slugs smashing into the wide-open form of Aethyta. She staggered as her barrier flickered, and he shifted his aim, firing at the desperately rolling form of Kai Leng, catching him in the leg, which spat sparks and locked in a bent position.

P. stood, grinning, and then staggered back as a hi-ex round blasted into his hip, sending him sliding across the ground roaring in agony. Garrus smiled and sighted in again, this time firing at the towering shape of Tazzik, who was about to finish off Krios.

Tazzik jerked as the armor piercing round blasted into him, but unlike P. was not seriously affected. He instead turned around, his cybernetic sensor installed on his jawline tracking back the shot, and a slender pair of ports on his shoulders opened up, spitting out four ultralight minimissiles.

The missiles hit Garrus just as he fired off his second shot. There was a powerful explosion, and then the section of the docking bay collapsed as the rusted pipes gave way, stone crunching through the edges of the landing platform.

Telanya staggered, eyes wide with horror. "Garrus! GARRUS!"

Liara looked up at the tone in her voice, and then to the explosion. "Oh Goddess, no."

Garrus's last shot had struck Tazzik dead on, staggering the giant salarian, and Krios dragged himself up from the decking. "Go to the sea, defiled one." He pushed his palm forward, biotic light framing him, and the still stunned Tazzik tumbled across the decking of the landing pad from the push, screaming as he tumbled off the edge.

A final pair of gunshots rang out, and then there was only P. , kneeling, bleeding, clutching his profusely bleeding hip. Shields and Pel, both wounded, had weapons trained on him, as did Miranda. Telanya was kneeling on the floor, shaking, and Liara bit her lip and wrapped her arms around her. She knew all too well what the other asari felt this instant.

She swallowed, looking over at Tali. "How much longer?"

The quarian girl shook her head. "I don't know...this thing is...crazy. It's like a lunatic programmed it, it contradicts it's own rules."

The turian's black-painted face was scraped here and there, and blue blood trickled from his mouth as he grinned. "Amazing. A glorious fight. Although, I fear, a pointless one. You'll never get away with the body."

He panted, and his eyes glowed blue in the dim light, making Miranda freeze. She narrowed her eyes. "And why is that? All of Omega is cast into chaos, all your men and the Broker's men are dead, and our ship is only minutes away."

P's answering laughter was definitely not entirely sane. "Well, my lovely, the first problem is the code your little quarian girl is trying so desperately to hack is based on a polymorphic neural net. One based on my own mind. It will take days to break it, and you don't have days. And it's slaved to me – I wasn't about to let the Broker rob me. If I die, or send a single pulse signal, the stasis tube blows up."

Liara's eyes widened in horror, but Miranda merely shrugged. "It would still keep Shepard's body out of the hands of the Collectors."

P's mandible flickered. "The...ohohoho. The fat shadowy bastard has been holding out prizes from the claw machine on me again, I see. Now it makes sense. Strike a deal with the big scary bugs, take out Omega, probably sell me and Aria up the river...mm. Plus on style and sneaky, minus on creative."

Kai Leng had gotten back to his feet, clutching his notched blade with his less injured arm. "You said there were two reasons."

P. glanced at him. "Yes, dark one. The other reason is that my people told me just before someone shot me in the fucking hip that Tetrimus was on his way here, and as exhausted as you bunch are, there's no way you can beat him too. I don't know how far he is, but it won't be long enough to hack past my programming, that's for sure. And you can't even move it otherwise – I loaded it with pulse dissapators."

Miranda closed her eyes. This was now a no-go of a mission. The Illusive Man would be furious.

Aethyta laughed tiredly. "Maybe, maybe not. Anything can be killed."

P.'s expression shifted. "...Aethyta, is that you old girl?"

The matriarch wrenched off her helmet, spitting blood as she did so. "I never met you. Heard of you, but never met you."

P's blinked. "Oh you met me. Just not … like this. How sad you don't remember. But no matter. Nice job – are those new tits?"

Aethyta blinked, and Liara felt an irrational urge to laugh.

Miranda glanced around. "We don't have time for this. If Tetrimus is coming, there's nothing we can do. Kill the turian and evac."

Liara growled. "Garrus died for this. We are not just giving up on Sara now. If you want to run, then run. I'm staying."

P. smiled. "I hear...rage. I love anger. And as a small aside, there is another option."

Miranda turned back towards P. "And that is?"

He slowly got to his feet, ignoring the weapons tracking his motion. "You let me go. Once I am in my pinnace, I transmit a code to unlock the stasis tube. I have been set up and have no quarrel with you...not after such a lovely, exciting workout these two gave me." He glanced at Kai. "Whoever is paying you, I can triple it, you know. All the blood and death you want and excellent benefits."

Kai slowly sheathed his sword. "I work for Cerberus."

P's mandibles snapped tight against his jaw. "Oh, well, then, that's probably a no. Still."

Miranda laughed. "You must think me a fool. How do we know you won't just blow it up once we let you go?"

P. sighed. "Monkeys. Never trusting. The answer is, lovely one, that you don't. That's part of the game. By the ancestors, I don't even know if I'll betray you or not yet. Whatever makes the chaos more delicious."

Liara set her jaw. "No. You die, and you don't see any more chaos." She glanced to Pel. "You said you had detpaks. Can they be remotely detonated?"

Pel snorted. "Wouldn't be much use otherwise."

Liara shifted her gun to pistol form and pointed at P's face. "We strap you with a detpak. You go away and transmit the code. If it doesn't work, or if you blow it up, we blow you up."

P's blue-glowing eyes widened and he laughed. "Oh...you. You. You, I approve of. There's no need for that, such a flawless little scheme needs a reward. The code for full access is 'detonate'."

Liara eyes' narrowed and she was about to shoot when Krios chuckled almost painfully. "You are really as crazy as they say, aren't you?"

P. shrugged. "I am sane. Everyone else is crazy. Why must people always say that?"

Miranda turned to Liara. "Well?"

Liara turned abruptly. "Everyone get away. Tali, I'll do this."

Tali got up, slowly. "But if it's a trick – "

Liara smiled sadly, although it was hidden by the helmet. "Then I will die. I'm already doing that now, I have nothing to lose."

Tali nodded slowly, and along with Shields, pulled an unresistant, shocked Telanya away. They withdrew, a good thirty feet, and then Liara tapped in the code.

"Processing. Security deactivated."

Liara exhaled, examining the status screen. It didn't tell her much, only that the tube could now be moved, that the contents were still intact, and the explosive was disarmed.

Miranda glanced at P. "We should still kill you."

P. smiled. "That would be the most chaotic move, lovely one."

There was a loud series of turian curses from halfway across the loading bay, followed by a groan of pain. "Oh, for fucks sake, I shot him in the hip. He's still fucking alive?"

Telanya leapt up, running across the bay, as extremely battered form of Garrus Vakarian clambered over the edge of the docking platform. His armor was battered, smoking and crushed, blood leaking from his now-unhelmeted head, and his right leg was bent, but he was alive.

Miranda exhaled. "Touching. But .. "

Krios folded his arms. "P. did not have any part in killing Shepard. I would let him go. He may be useful later."

Miranda hesitated, and then Aethyta spoke. "Let him go. I'm not convinced he's down for the count. It's a goddess-damned miracle none of us are dead yet."

Miranda didn't like taking advice from non-humans, but nodded. "Fine. Go. Remember this."

P. stood slowly. "Oh, no worries about that. I'll be seeing you." He limped off, trailing blood, back to his pinnace, and Miranda tapped her omni.

"Joker, where are you?"

The thin voice of Moreau sounded through her implant. "On my way. Shit! Things are really crazy and I've had to shoot my way out of three battles so far. I'm having to come around the long way, there's a pack of gunships under the Broker's command shooting up anything coming in from below. Be there in five or so."

Miranda clicked off. "Joker will have the ship here in five. We need to get moving. Let's move the stasis tube over closer to the entry."

Pel walked over to Kai. "You look like shit."

Kai took in Pel's bloody gunshot wounds and limp and sighed. "Hell, you ain't doing much better, slant-eye."

Kai fingered the single remaining knife in his belt. "Call me slant-eye again."

Liara watched as Tali carefully programmed the hovering stasis device, and it floated along, away from P's pinnace. The turian crime lord had reached its still open doors, and was staggering inside, when a bolt of blue light tore through the docking bay, striking him in the chest and sending him flying into his vessel with a thunderous crash.

Everyone in the bay whirled to the entrance of the docking bay, and Krios gave a tired sigh as a black-cloaked figure walked through the doors.

Tetrimus folded his arms, gazing over the group, and in the depths of the darkness of his hood, smiled. "Well, I see Tazzik fucked this one up royally. Since I'm in a good mood, though, I'll be sporting about this. Give me the body and no one dies. Or don't, and I'll kill you all one by one."

Liara squared her shoulders, dropping into cover, and the rest scattered.

Tetrimus sighed as he saw Shields among the figures in the docking bay. "Oh, Ms. Shields. I figured you had more sense than this."

Aethyta closed her eyes, took a deep breath, before speaking quietly to Miranda, crouched next to her. "There's only one way to do this, human. I'll hold him as long as I can. The rest of you get the fuck out of here."

Krios nodded. "I will assist. This one killed my wife. But the matriarch is correct, to fight Tetrimus is to die."

Miranda scowled. She knew very little about the cloaked turian except of his legendary power, but wasn't the same true of Tazzik? And Tazzik was dead.

"We can – "

Aethyta shook her head. "No. Trust me. You can't. Just...be ready to move. Suppress him with fire if you can, but stay in cover."

Liara swallowed. "Aithntar..."

Aethyta smiled. "Live, and I hope to the Goddess you find some kinda happiness." She blinked back her sudden rush of tears and steeled herself.

Tetrimus sighed. "I suppose you won't be reasonable. I hope you are then prepared to die."

Pel chuckled, racking his shotgun. "I was _born_ ready, motherfucker. Bring yo shit and lets see who dies."

Tetrimus smiled. "Gladly."


	39. Chapter 39 : An end to all things

_**A/N**:  
_

_A few things.  
_

_First, I've updated the ARC numbering, and redone the first chapter author note to reflect this. I've restructured a few things and moved some pieces I had planned for ATTWN into ME2. _

_Second, this is the chapter you were all dreading. I made several choices people will no doubt dislike. Things will be more clear in the fullness of time. _

_Third, there is a poll on my profile about the title of the next work, please take a look. _

_Finally, there's only one more chapter to go. _

_Reviews are always welcome, be they positive, negative, or derptastic.  
_

* * *

_'There is no valor in death. Only tears, and the fading memories of those left behind. Valor is in dying. Death itself has no modifiers.'  
_

_\- Tetrimus Rakora, personal files, date unknown  
_

* * *

It was the times like that that stressed Jack Harper the most.

He sat outside, legs dangling over the edge of the wooden deck, letting the cool seawater wash over his bare feet. An empty bottle of Wild Turkey sat atop the nearby railing, his own glass now empty save for half melted ice cubes at the bottom.

He'd sent away Trellani. Sent away the programmers. He needed solitude, sometimes, to contemplate the stars, to simply be Jack, who could doubt himself. Not the Illusive Man, not Mr. Harper. Just plain old Jack.

Jack who'd lost all he'd ever valued, and now gambled with dice he couldn't see.

A few cigarette butts still floated atop the water nearby, fallen brothers to the one in his fingers now, half burned down and barely touched. His eyes were turned to the night sky, the stars twinkling as if nothing could touch them.

He could plan and plot, move pieces into place, and let his money do the talking. He could craft a web of actions, pull together everything to set a brilliant scheme in motion, with so many directions that it only came together moments before the result was achieved, leaving nothing to chance or failure. Intellectually, he knew it would work.

But he always hated waiting for the results. The uncertainty, the fear he could never show, the fake confidence he had to radiate.

The hours would drag by – on Shanxi, wondering if Eva and Ben were alive or dead. On Yrath, bloody and beaten, tied in an AIS safe-house, not knowing if the small child his only friend had entrusted to his care had been shot or was alive. In the tense moments as he left the Denver Arcology, arm in arm with Trellani in a cheap, flimsy disguise, waiting for the AIS or Commissariat to gun him down.

Playing chess when you couldn't see the other sides moves was nearly impossible.

He finally took a drag off his cigarette, shivering a bit as the wind picked up, blowing over him. He wore expensive shorts and a smart-cloth casual shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a plain white t-shirt under that. His six hundred Johnson and Murphy boat shoes lay next to him, save from the water that would run the leather – real leather, from a real cow, not processed omnigel baked in some oven.

The little luxuries were important, after all. You had to keep up the image, even when it was nothing but bravado and hope, even when you didn't know how the dice you'd just thrown would land.

How things ended up didn't matter in the short term. After all, strictly speaking, Shepard wasn't vital for his plans. Her ability to read Prothean was nothing compared to the vast amount of data and capabilities Vigil offered, and what little she knew about the Reapers was, he had realized after talking with the Inusannon AI, somewhat distorted.

But Shepard's value wasn't really in those areas to begin with.

She was useful for what she had already accomplished and what she had later achieved. Her personal heroism was not the usual sort of talent he looked for. Most of his people were either extremely lethal killers or charismatic leaders. People like Brooks and Petrovsky, who could mislead and inspire those around them. Or people like Kai Leng and Theo Pellham, who could act in a number of capacities – spies, assassins, soldiers, or even trainers.

Shepard, on the other hand, was rather inflexible. She was not the sort of person who changed her mind or values easily, and on the surface had no reason to do so. But the profile Kelly Chambers had put together for him painted a much different picture.

Shepard had not found anything to truly believe in yet. She had no causes save wanting to protect the weak from the cruel, to smash in those who hurt others. It wasn't altruism that drove Shepard, but outrage and old pain. Sooner or later, exposed to others and forced to take a good look at herself, Shepard would have matured some more.

She was hard-nosed and pragmatic enough that eventually she would have ended up much as Ahern had, a man too tired and too compromised to risk everything to fix what was wrong with the Alliance. If he could have influenced her before that point came – made her truly understand why the Alliance had to change directions, and that the reasons had nothing to do with decency and everything to do with threat – maybe she could have been useful.

But she'd decided not to play along, despite the horror Kyle must have told her about. That baffled him, and didn't fit her profile at all. Still that didn't mean she couldn't be shaped and molded, even at this late hour. A few judicious adjustments to the truth would make her more likely to listen, and he could easily show her things that would illustrate the Alliance wasn't worth her time or loyalty.

His mistake had been two-fold – thinking he had time to act, and misreading the danger. He had assumed all dangers would be internal to the Alliance – that some clown like Saracino or Bekenstein would make a sloppy play that would allow him to show his ability to provide clear, straightforward answers and increase her trust.

Instead, he'd been so sure he was covering all his bases he forgot about outside interference. The assassination of Shepard – and it could be called nothing else – was nothing short of masterful. He wondered if the Broker had manipulated events in batarian space, or simply taken advantage of the chaos when it struck. He suspected the latter. Beatrice Shields had told Dunn and Kai Leng what little she knew and had trawled, but it didn't add up.

All of his few remaining assets – and Shields own data – indicated the Broker was pulling back from almost all his projects, his people becoming harder and harder to find. And this major operation, out of no where, catching him off guard – the pieces didn't fit.

He was stuck here, unable to react to changing conditions, and he was not seeing something critical. And the only thing he could counter with was a plan that, upon extended examination, was less a gamble and more a desperation play.

If it worked, he'd not only reverse the blow the Broker had dealt to his plans but amplify the power of his force many times over. With Shepard on his side, he could truly act. But it all depended on the next few hours.

If.

So many ifs. If his mad plan worked. If he was able to recover the body, and it wasn't too badly damaged. If this Doctor Wilson, and the scraps of information he had on Osiris, and Vigil all came through. If piled upon if.

And then, of course, he had to admit the real reason he worried. Miranda was out there, and this was the first time he'd sent her into such danger. Kai and Pel were there as well, but he knew full well this was no assault on simple soldiers or helpless targets, but with foes as dangerous as his own forces could be. He'd done what he could to improve the odds. But all he could do now was wait.

He finally stood, flicking the cigarette into the waters of the bay and heading back to the deck-house. He would make plans for all outcomes, and hope for the best.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The Shadow Broker stared at the rows of update monitors, watching as all but a handful shifted the information they contained. His operation was moving along the planned tracks smoothly. Extraction of raw resources at a dozen sites continued at breakneck speeds. Scouts had begun exploring the very rim of the galaxy for places to hide. One of his science team had come up with a novel idea for extending FTL travel – to send out 'guideboats'. Massive constructs of engines and fuel tanks, built with the ability to store massive amounts of electrical charge, they could be placed in deep space and allow his escape fleet to drop charge, thus lengthing the duration of FTL's that could be performed.

Everything was coming along nicely. Except at Omega.

He'd heard nothing from the units and people he'd sent in for over thirty minutes now, and that was longer than expected. If there was one thing the Broker hated, it was overdue status reports. That usually indicated unforeseen complications.

There shouldn't have been any, except one. Shields and her act of treachery. Even now his people weren't exactly sure what she'd trawled, but it was very likely she had somehow ascertained the Broker Network's role in Shepard's demise. Even if that was the case, however, and even if she notified Cerberus, that shouldn't have lead to them having the capacity to affect his plans in Omega.

His mind attacked the problem from all angles and came to two possibilities. One, Aria had blown up the communications facilities in an attempt to control the chaos, meaning he wouldn't know anything until someone put down an FTL comm buoy or repaired the comm relay. That was the most likely possibility.

The other possibility was that the plan had failed.

In either event, the time had come to clean up any remaining loose ends. At this juncture, only two still remained, and it was time to snip them both to cover his own tracks. He tapped the comm panel for his single remaining agent on Earth.

It took a few minutes for them to answer. "Vestige here."

The Broker adjusted his large frame in his custom-designed chair. "We may have complications. At this juncture, Mr. Saracino is no longer an employable asset. Distribute the evidence of his interaction with underage human females and insert evidence of the same with a very young asari, then implement the cleaning action we discussed earlier."

The rough voice whistled. "That is going to be risky."

The Broker's maw parted in what passed for a smile among his race. "A ship departing for Ilium will leave in three days. The pilot will have double your usual payment."

The man's voice perked up. "Whatever you say, boss. I'll be in touch when I'm done."

The Broker leaned back and considered the other loose end at length. The orders were purged, Saracino would soon be dead and his own people could clear out his comms logs and any attempts the human made at 'insurance', and the orders and other evidence of his tampering the Normandy were deleted or ashes on Alchera. The only remaining link would be Shields – soon to be dead one way or the other, and already discredited – and Goto.

He found himself often vaguely amused by the diminutive human female, and both she and her now dead lover-partner had provided him very useful service over the years. But the Broker didn't really understand gratitude, only certitude. Perhaps if Goto had eliminated Shields, there would have been no complication at Omega. But Goto's sense of self-preservation had failed to see that defiance would turn her from net asset to net liability.

The Broker had no use for liabilities.

He adjusted the vocal filters on his commlink, then tapped another circuit. "I need to speak with Donovan Hock. It concerns some information regarding a Mr. Okuda he might want to know about."

Better safe than sorry.

**O-ATTWN-O**

What was later referred to as the Burning of Omega was not a single event, but a series of events that fed off one another. In the long run, it actually increased Aria's power, but in the short term it was a disaster that claimed the lives of tens of thousands and made many realize for the first time that Aria was not actually invincible.

Aria T'Loak did not rule by sheer power, or fear, or manipulation, or seduction, or even by information – but by mixing all these things liberally into a finely woven tapestry that concealed the large, serious problems with her rule. These problems were often the source of her constant juggling of the many different parties that relied on Omega, like balancing a series of spinning plates on poles. Sooner or later they would all come crashing down, but until they did the results looked very impressive.

To the casual, outside observer, Omega didn't seem like it should have been able to function at all. But those observers were too used to the clean living and easy struggles of Council space, where bad things were limited to clean wars and minor actions. Those who made their living on and from Omega tolerated the bad conditions because there were no options.

A person who could make it on Omega, after all, could make it anywhere. There would always be outcasts, strong and weak. The strong grew stronger, or fitted in where they could. The weak died, or suffered, or merely endured.

Omega worked because there would always be places like it. On Earth, Tortuga; on Palaven, Vujana; on Thessia, the Iron Bay. A port against all those who embraced decency.

The merchants, smugglers, and businessmen that relied on her markets and illegal products, as well as her station being a clearinghouse of merchandise, depended on her iron rule to safeguard their lives and profits. In turn, they invested their money and influence on the station, and its defenses. They carved out enclaves and areas, safeguarded by their own security, where people could live fairly normal lives without dreading every second. And in return, Aria gave them a place with no tax laws, no regulations, no morals. She spoke the language they needed to hear. Omega didn't care about the law.

The pirates and slavers who used Omega both as a resupply station and a port of sale needed to know she wouldn't someday throw in with the Citadel and try to go legit. They had to have a base of operations, a place to stand. To recruit new members, to retire when the job got too hot and dangerous, to sell their sick cargoes and plundered items. Omega gave them that, and more. It gave them a sense of belonging many of them missed, even if they wouldn't admit it.

Being a part of the Black Fleet gave them a sense of pride – pride at the fear the Council races had, pride in their might and even their lawlessness. If they terrorized those who were unfortunate enough to have to work the docks, Aria didn't care. Omega didn't care. More would replace them, because the jobs paid well and required no skills beyond a nerve to work and taking the chance at getting your head blown off by a pissed off pirate. Aria spoke their language, too.

The warlords who needed her eezo and industry to fuel their own empires had to be willing to let her be first among equals, but needed certainty that she wasn't trying to rule them directly. She was charming and seductive, stern and daring, insightful and coy all by turns. As long as she had the power to crush any few of them, they had a way to trust one another. A common core, one that prevented betrayals and gave them a bare outline of a organized structure.

When she traded a share of Omega's docking spaces and profits with them for slaves, or eezo, or minerals, they had a relationship based on profit. They could understand that. And as powerful as she was, as lethal as she was, as long as they bowed to her on her station, she treated them as kings in their own claimed systems and spaces. She told them they had authority, legitimacy, and power. They loved hearing it. Omega didn't care about nations in space – only for sheer power.

The gangs required enough ego left over to say they were a key part of Omega while benefiting from her maintaining a modicum of order. They managed things on the station she didn't want to deal with, each carefully guarding their own territory. To be a gang on Omega – to be granted the Blue Kiss for all your gang members – was confirmation you were big shit. The Shadows had been nothing until they gained her backing, now they held three star systems.

The very first thing the Blue Suns had done under Vido Santiago had been to appeal to Aria. Omega gave them a HQ immune to Citadel oversight, immune to taxes and inspections and reporters. It gave them security, in return for cooperation.

Even the downtrodden had to be reassured, that while Omega was horrible and people would die, her rule would at least ensure only the weakest were actually preyed upon, and that while it might not be great, you could make it on Omega and maybe dream of one day leaving. On Omega, no one could be made a slave. You could die, yes, but if the killer didn't have the Blue Kiss, they could be shot down by anyone.

And for years, a group of shadow vigilantes had brutally executed those who broke that subtle truce, and Aria had never stopped them. The gangs and pirates and slavers didn't fear them, but the petty criminals – the predators – they did. They hesitated. They struck only in those areas where they could be sure of escape.

Omega was a festering, vile den of scum and villainy. Yet it worked, because of a delicate, fragile cooperation and acceptance.

The Broker's assault, which was amplified by bickering between the gangs, the warlords, and some of the more influential slavers and business types, was designed to attack this sense of acceptance. In the main, all it did was convince everyone that they could try to carve out more influence for themselves at the cost of others – because wasn't that how Omega always worked?

No one seriously contemplated toppling Aria. The message about her plotting with Sederis didn't fool Eclipse at all, since they knew full well where their mistress was, and how unlikely it would be for her to agree to such a thing. Their own counter-claims made some warlords rethink their stances on the issue.

When P's pinnace fled the station, the badly wounded crime-lord announcing the Broker had double crossed him and was trying to get Aria and many of the warlords killed so he could take Omega for himself, many of those fighting were angered at being duped. Aria, being no fool, offered to forget any misdeeds as long as they turned their ire onto the Broker's ships.

The commander of the Shadowstrike was thus in a conundrum. His firepower was great enough to smash any number of smaller and even larger ships, but his other ships would be overwhelmed in short order, and then his dreadnought would be the singular target of the entire enraged Black Fleet.

He'd lost contact with Tazzik and with Tetrimus. There was no indication they'd retrieved Shepard's body. The Collector vessel was impatiently asking what the delay was about. With the comm relay blown to wreckage atop Omega, the only method he could have of communicating was to drop an FTL buoy and wait for a response.

He pulled his ships back, transmitting to Aria that he was asking for instructions from the Broker and that he would remain out of firing range until he had them. He watched as Aria masterfully turned her wrath – and the wrath of those who listened – on the few warlords still refusing to stand down, and on the gangs still fighting on the station.

Fires and explosions wracked the ancient station, and by the time the answer came in from the Broker, it wasn't one he wanted to hear. Proceeding with the plan at this juncture was suicide. Omega's GTS defenses were still up. He couldn't get a clear shot off at the power linkages, and if he got close enough to do so the fleet would blast his ship to atoms, and make landing the Broker's troops needed to secure the station impossible.

He held position, sending off another comm beacon.

When a single, dark ship erupted from Omega at a high rate of speed almost twenty minutes later, dodging GTS fire, he recognized Tetrimus's personal corvette, and moved his ships in a course to intercept it and cover its escape. Tetrimus commed him.

"Status of the fleet." The commander goggled at the image on his view screen – Tetrimus looked as if he'd been nearly beaten to death, blood spattering his face and his visible cyberware damaged.

The commander, a turian, ignored his own curiosity and reported, and Tetrimus nodded. "Pick up my corvette and withdraw all ships immediately."

The commander frowned. "What about Shepard's body? And the planned invasion?"

"The body is unrecoverable. As for Omega, that's not going to work either. My only goal now is to minimize further losses. Tetrimus out."

The commander sighed, barking orders to his people, and wondered how well the Broker would take this. He didn't expect it to go well.

**O-ATTWN-O**

Tali awoke to pain. Not just localized pain, but pain everywhere. Her chest felt like it was on fire, and her body felt sluggish, cold and weak. She blinked tears out of her eyes, wondering why her body hurt so badly, and then tried to look around. She was laying in a medical pod, strapped in, and something was wrong with her left arm.

She glanced down at herself and then blinked. Her arm was gone.

It hit her then, what happened. The fight. The mocking, cruel voice of Tetrimus as he played with them like they were nothing but children, the sharp laughter as he'd just ignored their weapons.

The scream of Garrus when that explosion had blown away part of the docking pad. The shock when all he saw what was left.

As she remembered, the door on the far side of the room opened, and Miranda walked through it. She'd taken off her armor, but burns could still be seen under the medical packages on her shoulder and around her torso. Part of her long, dark hair was gone, where blood was still crusted around one ear and in bandages around her head.

She tapped several controls on the pod next to Tali, the one holding the broken form of Theo Pellham. She muttered something, then checked the other pod, holding the very still shape of Kai Leng.

Then she sighed and checked Tali's.

Tali swallowed. "How...I blacked out. How bad is it?"

The woman's face tightened. "Our objective was successful. We recovered the stasis pod. We are headed out of the Omega System."

Tali frowned. "That's not what I meant!"

The cold blue eyes met her own gaze. "Beatrice Shields is dead. We found … most of Officer Telanya's left leg, and Doctor T'Soni's forearm, by the edge of the section where Tetrimus blew up the landing pad. Garrus had his arm ripped out and was already half dead when Tetrimus blasted him, I do not see how he could have survived the fall. Kai Leng is severely wounded and his cybernetic legs are completely inoperable. We fell back when Mr. Moreau arrived with the ship. When you were hit with the warpfire, Mr. Krios managed to deflect the Beam attack that would have killed you and we … dragged you out of the way."

Tali swallowed. All her friends were dead. Except Jeff. "And...Aethyta?"

Miranda shook her head. "We left while she and Krios were still engaged with Tetrimus, as she told us to do." She paused. "We have not heard from them since, but it looks like the docking bay was … collapsed behind us with some kind of biotic explosion. The best we can hope for is that they took him out with their own lives."

She tapped a control on Tali's pod. "Pel was hit with so much warpfire that I'm not sure he's going to survive until we get to a real medical facility. Kai is … stable. You have some kind of infection, and this pod is not fully equipped with quarian physiology databases. Nor am I familiar with your … people. I've stabilized you as best as I can … but the infection is in your blood and spreading."

Tali somehow found it amusing that the Cerberus woman looked almost sad at that. "How long do I have?"

Miranda checked something on the console. "Hopefully, enough time for us to reach Guth. There is a medical facility there that has a ward for the quarian miners working for Ashland-Eldfell, and critical care facilities for humans. Until then, I am going to put you in stasis."

Tali would have said something, but Miranda's fingers tapped a control and then everything went still.

Miranda exhaled slowly, watching the frozen shape of the alien girl. Her mind flicked back to the ugly fight in the docking bay, wondering if she should have – or could have – done anything differently.

Tetrimus had been too strong to fight, and they didn't have the weapons needed to take down a biotic of his power. The T'Soni woman had tried, pulling out more power that Miranda had ever seen, a look of intense hatred and rage in her features. Aethyta, Krios and Miranda herself had tried to assist, to batter down the turian assassin's almost impenetrable barrier.

When it came down, and Liara's warp blast hit the figure standing behind it squarely, Tetrimus had shattered into static. He'd anchored his barrier to a holoprojector and moved to a better position. And his first strike had been lethal.

A lancing beam of white-hot fury had torn into Shields. She didn't even have time to scream as her body just exploded into shreds of burning meat, giant shockwaves flung in all directions, knocking them all from their defensive positions.

The Broker's assassin leapt down from some higher point he'd reached, uncloaking as he did so, moving with the speed only a biotic master could achieve. He'd backhanded Kai Leng across the face, sending the human flying back, wrapping him in warpfire as he did so. Kai had struck Garrus and both tumbled, the turian's powerful sniper rifle skidding out of his hands and off the edge of the docking bay to fall into the abyss below.

Pel had opened fire, the shots deflected by the turian's barrier, then had been jerked from his feet by a lift. Even as Liara and the rest whirled to retarget themselves, Pel was pulled across the decking roughly, screaming as he came down awkwardly on his right arm, and then Tetrimus laughed and flung him away with a throw.

The fields overlapped and detonated even as Pel was flung into Miranda, and she'd dropped her weapon as his heavy form slammed into her, driving her head into the corner of a cargo container hard enough to make her vision blur. She could remember flashes of the fight for a few seconds – Garrus firing something with his assault rifle, Aethyta moving forward, somehow knocking away Tetrimus's warpfire blasts with her sword – and then felt Krios getting her to her feet.

The Dancer had given her a grave but almost gentle look. "You must get the body out of here. We haven't even landed a blow on him yet. He is playing with us. Flee. Now."

Before she could respond he was moving, moving his hands in a biotic invocation and throwing lines of blue force at the Broker's agent. Tetrimus staggered – the line of deadly force he'd flung at Tali missed. Instead of blasting her to ruin, it sheared her arm off cleanly, her suit automatically sealing itself as the quarian screamed and collapsed.

Miranda had wasted no time. As Garrus, Liara, Telanya, Krios and Aethyta moved to circle Tetrimus, she saw on her omni-tool that Joker was approaching fast. She messaged him to come to the south side, even as she saw P's pinnace suddenly take off, whirling into the dark, cargo bay doors closing even as it took off.

Tetrimus stared at it a second, before parrying a sword swipe from Aethyta with some kind of long, curved knife. He leapt up high, using biotics to aid his jump, scattering warpfire below him in a curved shape with jutting blobs of spinning energies at the edge, and the group stumbled back, split into two groups.

When Tetrimus landed, he lashed out with another beam of cutting white light. It slashed across the decking, through Liara's left arm that was about to throw warpfire, through Telanya's outstretched leg as she tried to get to her feet, and through the support beams that held up the corner of the landing pad.

Miranda heard Garrus's scream of rage as the platform dropped away, taking the two asari with it.

Joker brought the ship to where P's ship had taken off from, the cargo bay already down, and Miranda gritted her teeth. She used her omni to quickly instruct the stasis tube to head into the cargo bay of the ship, then used her biotics to pick up the battered, wounded forms of Kai Leng and Theo Pellham and dragged them along as she ran for it.

She didn't even know when the bolt of warpfire hit her, burning through her armor and searing her body, but she definitely felt it when it cut off, as Garrus flung aside his weapon and leapt atop Tetrimus in howling rage.

She was fuzzy on what happened next. She remembered Joker screaming at her to help Tali, and she just reacted without thinking as her body was being flooded with painkillers from her armor. She remembered watching Tetrimus pluck off Garrus' arm like a boy pulling the wings from a fly and flinging him towards the shattered section of the docking bay, the scream as Garrus helplessly flailed with talons at the decking before he slid over the edge.

She was dragging Tali up the ramp when Aethyta slammed into Tetrimus from behind, her sword bursting through his torso with a flare of blue. Miranda had collapsed to the decking, wondering why she was bleeding and hot, as Krios did something with his biotics, and the heavy metallic beams supporting the docking bay began to buckle.

The last thing she remembered was Joker pulling her inside the ship all the way even as it lifted off, and her thought that they must be on autopilot as he was crying too much to have seen how to fly.

When she'd awoken, Joker had been awkwardly trying to patch her up with medigel, frantically screaming that he had no idea how to work the medical creche and that Tali was dying. She'd somehow gotten Kai, Pel and Tali into the three pods they had in the tiny medical bay, her mind still fuzzy as she went through the steps to kick off medical stabilization routines prior to stasis.

Then she felt light-headed, and realized she was in shock. A shot of adrenaline, some painkillers and ten minutes with the medical kit had cleared her head enough to think, and she'd finished stabilizing the three survivors.

She slowly made her way towards the cockpit of the ship, noticing the blood scattered all over the deck around the stasis pod of Shepard's body. She supposed she should be elated. The mission was done. All Cerberus assets were still alive, Tazzik and most likely Tetrimus was dead, P. might be useful in blunting any Broker advances. Aria was definitely weakened, and Shepard's body was in their possession.

Joker glared at her when she sat down next to him. "Is Tali okay?"

She shook her head. "I... I don't know. Set course for Guth, Morlais system. There's dedicated medical facilities there, for both quarians and humans."

Joker exhaled. "What about Garrus, Liara, and Tel? What about Aethyta? Are we just writing them the fuck off?"

Miranda met his stare squarely. "I'm sorry for the loss of your friends, Mr. Moreau. But they're dead, or at the very best dying. Going back now would just get the rest of us killed, and we don't have any more medical pods to stabilize them even if we could find them."

Joker pulled down the brim of his cap. "Goddamn it."

**O-ATTWN-O**

Garrus heard voices. Indistinct. Weak.

He felt like he was floating. Nothing had any feeling to it. Pain swam across his body and he only registered it as a dull throb.

He knew he was Garrus. Something came after that. It was a blur. He drifted, dreaming of curved nests, of hands holding him aloft to a burning sunlit sky, of clean blue creepmoss and thick, stormy clouds.

"Angel, this guy is a fucking goner. He's broken up so bad that he's bleeding out through his fucking plates, man. We can't waste this kind of gear on some busted up spike."

That voice was irritating. Whiny. A female, maybe? Sounded like some thick-wasted plains girl. He tried to smile, but nothing moved.

Why was he so still?

Another voice spoke. Heavier. Grittier. A good voice. Sad, but firm. "Not the point, Weaver. You know the rumors. Whatever went down today, it hurt the Blue Bitch bad. Did more damage to these bastards than we have in years. I don't know how he got into the Pit, but there's garbage tubes running right past the dock where they found those dead asari and the Dancer."

Dead … what? Asari. Why did that sound so familiar? He had a flash of memories, or images – blue lips, delicate gray eyes staring into his own.

A name. Del. No. Not Del. Sel?

The first higher pitched voice spoke. "So you want to question him, fine. But why waste all the stuff we boosted just to fix him up if he's fucking dying?"

The heavier voice chuckled. "Because it's the right thing to do, that's why. Look at him. He's got a C-SEC marking on his shoulder, and it's not burned through. What the hell would C-SEC be doing here if not to help?"

Another voice spoke. Cool. Dispassionate. Calm. "I can think of several reasons. None of them good. If you're determined to do this, he needs a real doctor, not whatever bullshit Melenis comes up with. That way, we can keep our haul and, if you must, save his life."

The voice who had been called Weaver gave a sound like a vakar snuffling for a trail. "You mean take him to Gozu? God, just let the poor fucker die in peace, why don't you, Erash?"

"Are you suggesting Dr. Solus is somehow incompetent, Weaver?"

Pain lanced through his head, and he wished he could stop it.

"No, Erash. But you said it yourself the last time we went there. He's a Solus. They're all fucking crazy. What kind of certified nutjob comes to fucking OMEGA to start a volunteer health clinic and not charge anyone? And Aria gave him the Blue Kiss without him even asking for it? He's probably a fucking spy, a plant. We drag this guy there, and if he's in the shit with the Blue Bitch that's game over."

The heavy, dark voice spoke. "I need answers. He's the only one who might have them. Stim him up and load him in the van."

There was a faint sensation of swaying, and a faint illumination from somewhere. He struggled to open his eyes, but couldn't see anything.

A cool, soft liquid spread over his chest. It smelled like vanak trees, and he felt a mandible quiver.

"Shit, his mouth-thingy moved."

"Jesus fuck, Butler, it's a mandible, not a mouth-thingy."

More bickering blurred into non-sense words. Strange smells assaulted him, as the pain started changing, spreading in lines from his center outwards.

He didn't know when he fell asleep or passed out, but he knew when he awoke. He felt a coldness against the side of his head, and his body felt strange. Unbalanced. Off-center.

"Ah, good, awakening. Worried might have set suppressor too high."

The voice spoke so rapidly the words almost blurred together, and Garrus tried to move. A gentle hand pressed down on his right arm.

"Recommend stillness. Nerves still in set process. Software needs reboot, not linking properly with implants."

He coughed, and blossoms of agony erupted like flowers over his head, his chest, and his right side. A moment later, gentle hands poured water into his parched mouth.

"Where..."

The high-pitched voice spoke. "Gozu clinic, lower levels. Omega, if truly lost. Rest. Recover. Barely managed to stabilize."

A delicate, sweet sounding voice reached his ears. "Is he going to be alright, Doctor Solus? Angel was...very worried."

The voices drew away, speaking softly. "Uncertain. Heavy infection, from duration in trash pit, open wounds. Burns – heavy impact, explosive, armor fragments. Long fall. Surprised he survived this long. Replaced what I could. Leg is good quality, arm less so. Eye is … salvaged."

"And his memory?"

"Unclear. No way to test without full awakening. Not recommended. Still weak. Shock. Turian hypervolemic reaction reducing blood-flow. Can compensate, xenocylene, but secondary effects...unpleasant."

"Alright. Please take care of him. I'll go tell Angel." Quick, light footsteps. The sliding sound of some kind of doorway.

Garrus slowly drifted into sleep.

**O-ATTWN-O**

The last thing Aethyta remembered was the mocking laughter of Tetrimus, as he'd blasted both Krios and herself with warpfire.

She'd collapsed first, even as the ceiling trembled. She remembered coughing up blood as she saw the drell and the turian struggle with biotic forces, one striving to crush them all, the other preventing it. Krios's and Tetrimus both had their hoods down, the drell writhing under the unrelenting barrage of warpfire that hammered at his barrier, his red robes smoking here and there from the sheer power.

With a roar, Tetrimus gestured. The roof collapsed, but a sheet of biotic force channeled the falling debris right at her and Krios. She didn't know what happened to the drell – she threw all her strength into her strongest barrier and then screamed in agony as she felt the world collapse on her.

Pain had wracked her body, as dust flew in thick clouds, choking her. Seconds later, her barrier gave out completely, and she was smashed to the ground by a sliding piece of rubble. Pinning her back to the ground, she was lucky to not have her spine broken.

She remembered rubble to her left exploding away, huge chunks of stone flying in a spray of blue light, and Tetrimus walking out onto the shattered wreck of the landing pad. He kicked something at his feet, a torn and smoking red long coat, and smiled and turned to her.

She'd snapped her eyes shut, and she felt him walk closer, before sighing a moment later. "And then there were none. A pity. At least one captive would have been worth something."

She heard footsteps, and a crackling of electricity, and then nothing but the howling of the wind and the sound of explosion and battle in the distance. Rocks shifted, putting more pressure on her back, her arms trembling as she was bent forward, her legs slowly going numb.

She couldn't find any strength to move the rock biotically, and given how unstable the pile was, trying to do so was likely to kill her. Didn't fucking matter anyway. Her child was dead. Her bondmate was dead.

She might as well go as well. She remembered trying to move the rock, then pain and blackness.

Now she was laying in some sort of medical bed, covered in blue-silken sheets. The room was small, the walls curved delicately, the ceiling black metal. A single crescent shaped window was on the near wall, showing nothing but rock and stars.

The door slid open, and Aethyta grimaced as Aria T'Loak stepped through the portal. "Ah, the grandmother awakens."

Aethyta looked at the eyes of Aria, so cold and amused, and knew she was probably going to die in pain. "Well, kiddo, looks like I was almost right about going out on this stunt."

The queen of Omega smiled thinly, slowly walking around the medical unit. Her fingers trailed over the haptic displays, touching one here, and she nodded at whatever she saw. "So, good news first, Matriarch. You are still alive. And it looks like at least a few of your friends got away alive."

Aethyta felt hope surge painfully in her chest. "Liara...my daughter."

Aria's smile turned cruel. "Not exactly. The remains of her left forearm and omni tool were found at the docking bay where we found you, along with most of an asari leg my people have confirmed is that of C-SEC Officer Telanya Nasan. Additionally, from the very large amount of turian blood and bits of an arm and … well, eyeball we found near the waste pipes, we can say C-SEC Officer Garrus Vakarian is also dead. Another human woman – we think, there wasn't much left of her – and three Dancers were also dug out of the wreckage...along with over forty of P's and the Broker's people. All dead."

Aethyta closed her eyes. "And Shepard's body? What about a quarian girl?"

Aria's smile became a smirk. "No female quarians. If Shepard's body was in that wreck it's probably paste now unless someone else got away via ship. But after P. left, no ships left the station except that of Tetrimus."

Aethyta glared. "That bastard killed my daughter. He double-crossed you. You let him go?"

Aria sat down on the edge of the bed. "I will make my displeasure known to the Broker at the right time – namely, when I'm not putting down rebellion on my station, and facing a dreadnought beyond GTS range. That's not what you should worry about, my dearest Aethyta." She trailed a finger down the shape of the matriarch's body, past her nipple, smiling.

"You should be asking how you can prove of any use to me. You're a bit old to be dancing...and besides, that collapse broke your spine. You'll never walk again."

Aethyta found she didn't really care. About that, or anything. It was all fucking pointless after all. "Why should I give a shit? Just fucking space me. I'm sure you'd get a few sick seconds of amusement out of that."

Aria shook her head. "No, I have a better idea, I think." She tapped her omni-tool, a haptic image floating in mid air, showing what looked like a cybernetics chop-shop. Bulking, strange equipment and articulated arms hung suspended from the ceiling of the room, along with adjustable lights. Banks and banks of tubes of blue and red fluid held arms, legs, torsos – some turian, others asari. The floor was rusted and grated metal, notched regularly with drains.

Several dead asari lay on the steel tables in the front of the room, and two more asari – one missing a leg – were in the rear, on medical beds full of support equipment, surrounded by what looked like salarians.

Aria's voice was teasing, but held a musing note. "You see, I really want to hurt the Broker for this stunt, but I find myself crippled by this attack. The delicate balance of Omega that I am the sword-tip of is … out of balance. It will be years before I am strong enough to face him openly, and he'll be watching me the whole time. I can't afford to send off people to harass and kill him without weakening myself even more."

She glared hotly at Aethyta. "I am not about to let that thing, whatever he is, actually get away with this outrage. So I need a weapon."

Aethyta sighed. "Goddess damn. I don't give a fucking sea-spinners shit about what you need, you crazy fucking brat. My DAUGHTER is dead."

Aria only smiled wider and zoomed in on the upper left portion of the image. "She's legally dead, yes. But right now, my best two doctors are stabilizing her life-signs."

Aethyta sat up, or tried to. Agony shot down her back, stopping at her waist, and she sagged back, sweat breaking out on her forehead and shaking from the pain. She could see the face of the asari being worked on, the ragged mess that was the left side of her face.

Aria smirked. "Oh, sorry. Forgot to give you painkillers. Maybe that will blunt your fucking tongue a bit. Now...ah yes." She stretched slightly. "Your daughter and this … clanless hanger-on... fell about six stories. On the plus side, the piece of decking they fell with smashed into a factory roof and sliced open a coolant tank, which helped break their fall. On the minus side, it also helped break their bodies."

"Your daughter is even more broken up than you are. Beside the hand, she got her left eye and part of the left side of her head smashed, most of her ribs shredded her lungs, and both legs are ...well, mostly mush and splintered bone. The cop is missing a leg, most of both arms, and several organs are just paste. The only reason they survived is they crashed into the Shadows clone-rigging chop shop and were thrown into stasis."

Aethyta was reeling from the suddenly whiplash of thinking her daughter was dead to knowing she was now alive, and trying not to start just sobbing. She was exhausted, old, and broken. She let her eyes meet Aria's and saw the smug triumph there.

In a tired voice she spoke. "Alright, Aria. What do you want from me? You have me where I've got no choice but lick your midnight."

Aria's smile was cold poison. "For now? I want you to beg me to save the life of your precious little girl, Aethyta. Because the Shadows want to use them for spare parts. Convince me not to allow that. I want you to plead and cry. Abase yourself."

The old matriarch looked up, her mouth falling open. "You're really that petty, that … shallow?"

Something flickered in the other asari's eyes. "Omega has no heart, you should have figured that out a long time ago, when you spied on me and thought I didn't know. But Omega has pride, and a certain image to keep going. That image can't be allowed to falter, or people might start asking themselves questions."

She leaned close, until Aethyta could smell her perfume, the subtle scent of her sweat and her body oils. "You forgot my rule. Now beg."

**O-ATTWN-O**

General Jason von Grath stood at full attention in front of the three men in the vast administrative offices of the Systems Alliance High Command building. The huge desk behind which the admirals sat was elevated a good five feet off the ground, dominated by a giant logo of the Systems Alliance flush against the rich cherry wood of the desk.

The wide bay windows beyond, of clear aluminum, showed the soaring skyline of Vancouver, the blue sky beyond filled with soaring ships and the crawling paths of air-cars. It was a beautiful, sunny day.

"General Jason von Grath, step forward."

He did so, lifting his chin. His dress uniform was immaculate, his medals neatly arranged across his chest. His scabbard hung empty by his side, as his dress sword lay atop the desk in front of High Admiral Branson, who looked down on him with narrowed, dark eyes.

"We have, over the past week, reviewed the statements by yourself, Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Moreau, and Lieutenant Commander Tali'Zorah nar Kazan ri Rayya. We have heard testimony from the AIS and Commissar Jiong, as well as reports from various … other sources … about events on Omega and the death of Lieutenant Commander and Baroness Liara T'Soni-Shepard."

"Before we adjudicate this hearing, I wish to make a statement, to you, General, and to the Alliance." Branson folded his hands across the desk.

"From what we have heard, you deliberately and knowingly engaged in theft, collusion, and disobedience of standing orders, as well as aided and abetted Alliance personnel in becoming absent without authorized leave. The reasons for this, in the eyes of the Alliance Code of Military Justice, do not matter. In the eyes of the public, however, they do."

"I cannot excuse the conduct unbecoming of the three officers before this court. I can say we are thankful you performed what we thought impossible, that we are grateful... but that a crime is a crime."

He exhaled. "The story we have been told, fellow admirals, is simple. General von Grath, operating on his own and using his noble house's resources, did send out a Systems Alliance ship with LTC Moreau, LTC T'Soni-Shepard, and LTC Zorah. In addition, he allowed nominal Alliance citizens of record – several mercenaries and two known figures, Garrus Vakarian and Telanya Nasan, to board this vessel, which he illegally issued orders to head to Omega. Regardless of intent, this misuse of government property and personnel is a serious charge. Illegal and forged orders are also a serious charge."

"General von Grath has refused to tell us who told him of the plan by the person or persons known as P. to sell the corpse of Sara Ying Shepard to the Broker. He instead maintains the information was sent anonymously. This is a clear lie and a serious charge."

"According to what we have reconstructed, LTC T'Soni-Shepard, Garrus Vakarian, Telanya Nasan, Aethyta Vasir, and several human mercenaries died in the process of retrieving the remains of Shepard. Only LTC Moreau and LTC Zorah managed to survive this … debacle, returning to Alliance space after several days in the Traverse mining colony of Guth. While technically on bereavement leave, LTC Zorah and LTC Moreau were not given formal permission to leave Earth."

He paused. "While a serious charge, given that they were issued what they thought were lawful orders, this is not a slight against these two officers. However, it cannot be overlooked."

Tali'Zorah sat in a lift chair, still missing her left arm. She was still recovering from the infection that nearly killed her, and the doctors said she might be weakened for the rest of her life. Joker stood at stiff attention next to her, jaw trembling.

Branson took a deep breath. "A part of me wants to salute you. For doing something the Alliance could not do. The … remains of Sara Ying Shepard have been given honorable internment in her grave. A grave has also been created for her wife, who died in this ill-advised if brave action. A memorial will honor them both. Lieutenant Commander T'Soni died in the best traditions of the Marines. Repensum Est Canicula. And at the proper time...the Broker will pay for his insolence and violation of our honored dead."

His voice hardened. "That does not, however, excuse these actions, or the potential cost they may have for the Alliance in the future. So far, Aria T'Loak has seen our interference as positive, declaring she had no involvement or knowledge of the actions of P. and the Broker. But you could have easily started interstellar war with the Traverse at a time when the Alliance is ill prepared for such."

"Given the close relationship LTC Zorah and LTC Moreau had with Major-Commander Shepard...this court has declined to press formal charges of desertion, dereliction of duty, illegal use of Alliance materials, or low treason against either of you. However, you have both been found guilty of conduct unbecoming a senior officer of the Systems Alliance. Per the recommendation of the Commissariat, you are both to be stripped of your rank and given an other than honorable discharge from service. While the Systems Alliance appreciates your service, bravery and skill, we cannot afford an officer corps willing to put emotions before duty."

Branson turned to face von Grath. "General Jason von Grath. You have been found guilty of collusion, theft, disobedience of standing orders, illegal issuance of orders, and conduct unbecoming an officer. As a noble of the Lords of Sol, we are unable to press charges against you in a legal standing, and the Court of Lords, after formal review, voted thirteen to two against bringing charges against you and stripping you of your noble rank."

Branson sneered. "However, you are immediately stripped of rank, and dishonorably discharged from the Service and the Officer Corps of the Systems Alliance." With that, Branson handed von Grath's dress sword to the marine lieutenant standing at the foot of the desk.

The lieutenant, a young man with sandy blond hair and a lantern jaw, swallowed as he set the tip of the sword on the floor, angling it, before stomping on the blade. It cracked and then broke, an ugly sound that echoed through the chamber.

Tossing the broken hilt aside, the marine lieutenant advanced on Joker first, roughly tearing away his rank shoulder boards, then the golden wings that identified him as a pilot, and finally the SA pin on his collar. He turned to Tali, more gently prying off the shoulder boards attached to her suit, and tearing away her SA-tinted reik, revealing the smooth curve of her head covering and the bared tubes leading to her suit's life support system.

Finally, the lieutenant tore away von Grath's honors, rank pins, chain and SA emblem, before stomping on them. He turned on a heel, pain in his eyes, and marched away.

"Dismissed, be gone from the sight of this court in your shame."

Von Grath inclined his head shallowly, his eyes like chips of ice, and turned. Joker pushed Tali's lift chair after him, and they exited the vast room,emerging into the wide hallway. At the far end of the corridor, a crowd of reporters waited, but von Grath merely gave them the middle finger and pointed Joker in the other direction.

"I am not inclined to dally with the hoi polloi this afternoon, Mr. Moreau. Head the other direction, I have a family car waiting. The least I can do is provide you two with a ride out of here."

Joker swallowed and nodded numbly. "Thanks." He didn't say much else, pushing Tali along quietly in the big general's wake.

He was remembering. Wondering.

He didn't remember much beyond landing at the colony and getting Tali into the hospital. Miranda had given him an apologetic look for some reason, and then he'd been hit on the head by something. When he came to, he was in a hospital room by himself, and a man with blue-glowing eyes was sitting across from him.

"Mr. Moreau. Glad to see you're awake."

Joker remembered the feeling of helplessness that had gone through him – his braces missing, in an unknown location with a strange person facing him. His bravado hadn't failed him, though. "And who the fuck are you?"

The man had smiled. "A friend. I'm the one who got you in touch with Ms. Shields and started this entire adventure you have just barely survived." A note of compassion entered the rich voice. "I am very sorry for the losses of your friends, Mr. Moreau. But I can tell you that Ms. Zorah is recovering. I am paying for her medical care, at least until she's mobile."

Joker swallowed. "You're...Cerberus then."

The Illusive Man leaned back in the chair he was in. The light in the room was so dim Joker couldn't make out much of his face, much less what he was wearing. "I am. You might say I'm the last of Cerberus, and the first."

He paused. "Mr. Moreau, your return to Alliance space is going to be problematic. I've had a conversation with General von Grath, who will provide you with a cover story when you return. But I would not, if you value your life, tell the Systems Alliance you cooperated with Cerberus. They will most likely take such a confession...poorly."

Joker narrowed his eyes. "Wasn't high on my list to admit I worked with a bunch of racist killers. But why the hell do you even care?"

The man sat forward again. "In many ways, I don't. What happens from here on out is nothing I can change or alter in any large fashion. However, you – and Ms. Zorah – could be valuable contacts in the future. You are a very skilled pilot, and she has both her engineering abilities and the connections to a powerful Admiral in the Flotilla to draw on."

Joker snorted. "So, you don't want to throw away useful tools, is that it?"

The man steepled his fingers. "Less tools, more … craftsmen, let us say. Shepard's body, or what's left of it, will go with you. See it buried with honor, Mr. Moreau. She deserves that much."

The man stood, leaving something on the small table next to Joker's bed. "I don't think the SA will allow you to keep flying for them. I could be wrong, but I rarely am. If that's the case...then when you need a job, call that TTG. I have something I could use some help with."

Joker had sneered. "Why would I work for you?"

The Illusive Man had paused in the doorway to Joker's room, casting him in a silhouetted outline. "Because otherwise Ms. Zorah would have died without treatment I paid for, Mr. Moreau. Forget our involvement in this affair. But don't forget my number."

Walking down the hallway, Joker hadn't forgotten the number. He frowned, staring at the broad unbowed back of von Grath, and finally spoke. "How can you just let them...do this to you?"

Von Grath's voice was almost weary. "Our mutual blue-eyed friend has my noble house over something of a barrel...due to the stupidity of my father. And it was either agree to this debacle, or have video of such a thing broadcast to certain parties which would take full advantage of it. I warned my father that the snake would always bite because it was a fucking snake."

The cybernetic hand stroked his handlebar mustache. "Clever little bastard. Don't worry, Mr. Moreau. Men like him will trip up sooner or later, and I plan to be there when it happens. After I put my boot into his ribs a few times and drag him off to the cell he belongs in, I'll thank him for having the decency to at least ship you two and Shepard's body back in one piece."

Joker nodded. Tali spoke, her voice still weak and dry sounding. "Now what? We...we don't have anything."

Von Grath stopped, sighing. "And for that, I am sorry. I could not convince those in power to treat this in the fashion it should be. Right now, there is simply too much … chaos. I can certainly put you two up at my lodge for a few days, but I fear Earth is a poor place for you right now."

Tali looked up. "I don't understand."

Von Grath turned, facing them, his eyes dark with stress and pain. "There are a number of questions unresolved. If anyone knew the truth, it would .. be bad for you two. Bad for me as well, but my noble status protects me. And my family has enough dirt on the others that I have no fear of someone coming after me some dark night to toss into me a cell for interrogation."

The former general sighed. "Nor, I suppose, would they risk your father's wrath, Ms. Zorah. But Mr. Moreau is very vulnerable, and the Commissars had many questions that I doubt they got the answers to that they wanted. If you stay on Earth more than a day, they will drum up some sort of reason to arrest him, and possibly you as well Ms. Zorah."

He resumed walking, coming to a broad and heavy doorway, clearly labeled "Lords Entrance". A pair of LOKI mechs standing guard by it opened it,

The lobby beyond was empty of reporters, but a pair of House von Grath knights irregular stood there, arms folded. Von Grath walked up to them, nodding. "Harry, Jenson, good to see you both. I need you to hustle me up a pair of air-cars. I'll be headed to the space port, and from there we'll go on back to Arcturus."

He gestured to Tali and Jeff. "These two need to get on the next flight to the Citadel. Charge it to the house account. And do not let them be harassed by the Commissars, they are under our House's protection."

The two knights exchanged looks, and the one named Harry nodded. "Yes, milord. I'll take the two guests to the starport personally. Your father wishes to see you when you get back to Arcturus."

Von Grath scowled. "No doubt he does." He turned to Joker and Tali. "I know this did not end the way we hoped it would. In a better, cleaner world...no one would have died just trying to reach for honor and decency. But we, sadly, do not live in such a place."

Tali nodded slowly. "I hate that Liara died...but … she was so broken over losing Sara...maybe..."

Joker shook his head. "No. Don't even think it, Tali." He looked up at von Grath. "If I ever get a chance to blow up that Broker asshole, I'm going to."

Von Grath's features twisted into a smile. "If you do, shoot him for me as well, Mr. Moreau. No matter what that pompous clown in the courtroom said...you two have comported yourself in the finest tradition of what duty could mean. Duty to one's friends. Duty to those who deserved better."

He bowed to them both. "House von Grath...I...owe you a debt for bringing my soldier back home. I will not forget it."

Joker nodded.

**O-ATTWN-O**

"She would have hated this bullshit and you know it."

Tradius Ahern stood in front of the glossy black stone monument, trying not grind his teeth at the sheer shitfuckery it represented. A stylized sculpture of hands clasped together over a heavy slab of stone, and a flowery inscription of some kind of poetry, of all the fucking things.

David Anderson's expression flickered into a smile. "No, I don't suppose she would care for it much. But Liara might have liked the poetry."

The two men stared at the memorial a long moment, as snow began to softly drift down. "Anything else come out of the investigation?"

Anderson sighed, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Nothing. Windsor is furious...but he's not going to be able to run for a third term. NDP is splintering and the entire mess with Saracino killing himself after those pictures came out … who knows what happens? The Alliance has just closed the case."

Ahern snorted. "Because we don't give a shit why our fancy ass stealth ship and our best fucking soldier got blown the hell up? There are times I hate my leaders. Idiots. Couldn't lead starving wolves to fresh fucking meat, I swear."

Anderson shook his head. "No, that's not it, Tradius, and you know it. The idea that the Broker is a hostile actor is something they don't like. And now, the bastard is at war with Aria, at least unofficially. The Council is getting pieces of intel from the Broker and he's playing it off like Aria was the one who put him up to obtaining the body. P. says different, but the turians hate him so much they won't listen."

Anderson scuffed his shoes against the hard stone surrounding the monument. "And the quarian Councilor is still furious we threw Tali out of the navy."

Ahern snorted. "On that, can't agree. She wasn't fucking ready and she got her arm shot off. I tried telling her not to try and hang with the big dogs, but she wanted to be a fucking hero." He folded his arms. "It's a mess, David. Geth are still out there, Shepard's dead. Broker is doing God knows what – and if he's not behind the Normandy disaster I'll eat my fucking hat – and what does the Alliance do? Not a fucking thing."

Anderson could only sigh again, kneeling down and brushing loose snow from the base of the monument. He placed the flowers – blue and white – on the ground, along with a tiny model of the Kazan. "I know. But … we have to keep moving on. She wouldn't want us to do anything else."

Ahern looked up, into the darkening skies. "Maybe not. I don't know much of anything anymore, except they've turned a functional fucking grave into a goddamned art exhibit."

Anderson stood. "She used to tell me she was scared. Of failing. Not being good enough. I wonder if she's dead because I let her down. Because I failed. Because I wasn't good enough."

Ahern glanced at the other man. "Maybe she is. But I think she's dead because she found out something and was a risk to someone. She ever tell you anything?"

Anderson thought back to the last time he saw her alive. "She … hinted. She said it was better for me not to know. She was shook up, I saw that much." He paused. "You really think..."

Ahern turned away. "I think there is no fucking way an asshole like von Grath would throw away his career to bring back scraps of a body. I think that the Alliance dropped this way too fast and didn't even look hard for the killer. I think … "

He trailed off, and then spat. "I think I'm old, and tired, and I should have opened my eyes to some things a long fucking time ago. Maybe I'll pull a Kyle."

Anderson frowned. "You can't. If Shepard was right, the Reapers are coming, sooner or later. We still need to prepare. To re-arm. To make her death mean something."

Ahern half turned to glance at him. "Death never means anything except you zigged when you should have zagged, David. Let's get out of this fucking cold. If I'm going to die of pneumonia, I'm not doing it in from of this oversize …" He paused. "God fucking dammit, the hands look like a pussy to me."

Anderson just shook his head. "You're seriously fucked up sometimes, Tradius."


	40. Final Chapter: The Trumpet Sounds

_**A/N**:  
_

_So, we're done. And despite my worries, I only went a few thousand words over my expected budget. (Progman, no snarky commentary until you finish Retrofits). _

_As a writer, I think ATTWN was 'better' than OSABC. I do plan to overhaul both stories at some point, and I VASTLY appreciate the amount of support, encouragement, and typo reports you all have given me. I'm aware this ain't everyone's favorite - certain people on Spacebattles apparently think I'm a hack - but I'm writing for those of you who do like it. _

_Saying that to say this: There are elements of this story that will require more than simply reading the words. Some things presented are not factual. Some things are hype, some things are inaccurate. Rarely if ever does the story give you all sides of events. That is on purpose. If something seems ... odd ... then you should remember it, because it is likely that way for a reason._

_Progman gets the majority of the credit, as much of the last few chapters was inspired by his own insane take on Omega and Aria. Liehtr, my beta, also sharply improved several chapters, including several critical points._

_I would like to give very special thanks to AlsoknownasMatt, metaladdict, AlexN7, nogui, nogoodnms, the lovely Nimraj12, LadyRainFeather, Wandering the Arid Sea, RED78910, and Kyren for ideas and feedback that, in one way or another, changed or redirected my original plans for this story. I also want to thank MonkeyEpoxy and Himuradono for some keen textual analysis of my strengths and more importantly weaknesses on the Dark Lord Potter Forums. Although the idea my word counts would shrink is heresy._

_I would like to thank everyone who reviewed, sent a PM, an email, or a digital hug. I never ask for money for this, but if you have some spare change, you might consider commissioning something from **LuckyFK**, or funding **alienyouthct**'s account, or going over to **All Nighter Productions** and having her do some crazy-good artwork for you. _

_Nemrut: sorry man, I can actually crank 10k a day, all I had were simple fifty word outlines for each chapter. This is why people have long lists of typos where I jack things up and miss words. (Or as 5 Coloured Walker puts it, I accidentally a word or two.) _

_This book was a blast to write, and based on the feedback I've gotten, at least a bit better than Mass Effect: Clusterfuck, or whatever the hell they called the comic. I can't even remember, and I own the thing. The ME2 piece I'm working on will start as soon as I get drunk and recover from pushing well over a hundred thousand words out so rapidly. I'll try not to write anymore crackfic since my current one broke some people's brains. _

_As usual, given this is the last chapter, review what I did WRONG as well what I did right. I don't consider myself where I need to be as a writer yet, because we can always improve at what we love doing_. _Reviews are always welcome, be they positive, negative, or derptastic.  
_

* * *

_'Dead? Bitch, please.'  
_

_\- Sara Ying Shepard to Tevos  
_

* * *

"Stasis fields steady and holding." The specialty AESIR mech continued adjusting settings, but the hard part was now completed.

Miranda slowly exhaled, a faint ghost of a smile crossing her features as she spoke into her omnitool. "The sample we took to create the flash-clone does not appear to have harmed the subject's viability. We are encasing the subject in a larger, more powerful stasis array until we are ready to begin work."

Even as she spoke, more AESIR mechs were adjusting the final touches to the stasis array that would preserve Shepard's remains for until Project Revenant was ready to proceed. She'd wanted to go with Lazarus herself, but the Illusive Man had shook his head and picked this more gruesome moniker instead.

The situation was not at all ideal in some ways. Shepard's body had taken more damage than they expected, and P's crude extraction of the corpse from the Normandy had done even more. On the bright side, Vigil's initial scans had suggested there was 'enough' to work with, although the device refused to give any more details.

Pel and Kai would recover, although both would need more cybernetics and long surgical recovery periods. Kai would also need a cybernetic eye replacement. She might need one herself, her left eye's vision was blurry at times still.

Marred perfection was not exactly her favored state. Still, the completion of the mission - and the unexpected relief in Jack Harper's eyes when he saw she was mostly unharmed - buoyed her mood. Even Minsta had been grudgingly impressed she'd pulled it off, and Trellani was bitchily graceful in her complements.

She watched as cryocooled fluids flooded the storage creche and then the stasis field erupted, freezing everything within its radius into immobility. The apparatus took up most of the core of the small cruiser the Illusive Man was having them use in the beginning phases of the plan, while he had a more fitting location scouted and built for the actual attempt at reviving Shepard.

Doctor Wilson's company had been bought out, and even now Jack Harper was working on bringing Wilson into the fold. Minsta had protested, but that was hardly surprising.

Miranda turned away from the ongoing stasis field, trusting the robots to finish the job without supervision. Now that the stasis field was up, hopefully they could find a method to get the near impossible task given to them by the Illusive Man.

Money wouldn't be a problem. Time would be the problem. They had three years – if they couldn't get it done by then, then the Illusive Man was prepared take drastic action. She hadn't been told what that 'action' was, but it worried her all the same.

There was little she could do about that now. Her next six months would be spent on Earth, studying biomolecular science, cybernetics and nanotechnology. She had a role to play in the coming operation – the Illusive Man was putting her in charge of Project Revenant. She couldn't afford to be ignorant of the techniques this Doctor Wilson would be using.

New technology and new instrumentation would need to be created, and using Trellani as a front, they were already buying up biotech companies. As a result of the chaos in the Alliance fleet, Brooks had been promoted to Lieutenant Commander in Alliance R&amp;D, and would channel them useful information when she could.

Miranda sighed. She would not enjoy the next six months. With a grimace, she clicked her omni-tool.

"I'm about ready for departure. Can I presume the ship is ready?"

The voice that answered her was sharp. "Can I presume Your Royal Bitchiness is actually going to be ready to go on time this time?"

Miranda rolled her eyes. "Mr. Moreau, if you dislike me so much, why would you agree to be my pilot?"

"Look, lady. I dislike everyone equally. I gave Anderson shit, I gave Shepard shit, now I give you shit. Besides, once we found out what the hell you were planning to do with Shepard, do you really think we'd leave you alone? Tali has the problem with the electronics fixed, so anytime you feel like, you know, getting on board, we're ready to leave. As we have been for _five hours._"

There was something to be said for needling someone so ill-prepared for her stoic nature. "Very well. I'll be there in fifteen."

"Sure, waste my time."

She clicked off, and turned to see the figure of Matriarch Trellani walk into the research bay. "Yes?"

The asari matriarch gave her that small, superior smile she always had. "I merely wished to wish you a safe journey, Ms. Lawson. Jack has decided I will stay here, on the Restless Spirit, and continue to work on the notes from our explorations of alien species."

Miranda arched an eyebrow. That was unlike the Illusive Man. "I see. Then I suppose I should get moving, thank you for your … concern."

The matriarch gave the shallowest of nods. "But of course, Ms. Lawson." She turned and left through the door she came in.

After she was gone, Miranda muttered. "Bitch."

**O-ATTWN-O**

"Well?"

Tetrimus sighed.

"Tazzik is technically alive, but the amount of work that will be required to make him functional is expensive and excessive. From what I can tell he was certainly winning until he made the completely idiotic mistake of actually turning his back on a Dancer."

The Broker gave what almost sounded like a sigh, and Tetrimus carefully suppressed his mirth as the sight of the massive form shaking his head in disgust. "And salarian intelligence is so highly touted."

Tetrimus coughed past his amusement. "In any event, most of the damage was from the fall – some twenty stories – into some kind of chemical plant after being thrown off the platform. The, ah, substances he fell into didn't exactly help either. Most of his organs are failing, and most of the external armor is wrecked. We have a good idea, based on the surviving data recording systems that weren't destroyed in the battle or by the fall, of who we were facing, as several names were tossed about."

The Broker tapped a thick finger on the desk. "We'll discuss that later. What kind of cost would it take to repair him, assuming we went that route?"

Tetrimus folded his arms. "Doctor Vaan says we can perhaps get him up and moving again, but we'd have to go well over 85% conversion. And no salarian has been taken that far. Even with the genemods and the information from Okeer's lab...that's going to be difficult to do. Timewise it would take a least six months. We'd have to remove all the current cyberware after stabilizing his current organs, redesign an entirely new body support system, install him like some kind of ersatz Shieldbreaker, and then rebuild from the ground up. At least thirty to fifty million – not counting research costs, materials, and so forth."

The office of the Broker was even more poorly lit than usual, and Tetrimus left spur – the one that wasn't cyberware – kept twitching every time the growling note of the Broker's displeasure vibrated through the room.

"I see. Tazzik's use has come to an end. Spending millions on salvaging his current form after this failure is inefficient."

Tetrimus sighed. Tazzik was going to owe him for this.

"I actually disagree. From everything I can ascertain, Tazzik's mistake was a miscalculation in battle. He was focusing on the most dire threats and assuming none of the rest of the people with Aethyta could harm him, which was probably correct. From what I saw, ignoring a sniper that had already taken down P. with a hipshot – not exactly easy to pull off in such chaotic conditions – would have been unwise, especially since we're almost certainly looking at the work of Vakarian."

Tetrimus carefully chose his next words. "While the project was a failure, the situation is not entirely dire. Aria has been weakened vastly, half of her warlords distrust her, Omega will take months or even years to recover. The Alliance distrusts us and yet, I suspect from their actions, the puppet masters behind the Alliance are happy Shepard is dead. The Council is clearly buying our version of the story over Aria's, especially given the footage from the battle showing how strong she was."

The Broker's multiple eyes narrowed. "I am not hearing why I should waste tens of millions of credits on Tazzik."

Tetrimus smiled. "Because he's well known and visible. As we move ahead with the evacuation, we will need that visible presence to avoid suspicion. The only other person in the Network who could possibly replace him in terms of combat power would be Almnrut – "

The Broker's glare was accompanied by a hard growl. "No."

Tetrimus bowed slightly. " – or possibly Tela Vasir, but that is risky given that she was never a full member of the Network, not to mention her own … ambivalence at the moment. The death of Aethyta Vasir and Liara T'Soni has made her … displeased. "

The Broker said nothing, and Tetrimus continued. "Spending the money and time on Tazzik – especially after Aria has so gloatingly announced his death – will shake her confidence even more when he returns, apparently unharmed. He can be used as a more public agent, dispatched on tasks to draw the eye. If we use him correctly, he can even spin a story for us to counter the claims of P."

After long seconds of silence, the Broker finally growled again. "I dislike expending effort and valuable resources and time on those who fail me, Tetrimus."

The turian's one cybernetic eye whirred. "And yet was that not the very reason the Primarch used to toss me aside on Shanxi? Tools, I think, should not be wasted simply because they were ill-suited for the job. Simply apply them to a different job."

The Broker made a waving motion with his hand. "I will discuss it with Vaan at a later time. What of our leaks and loos ends?"

Tetrimus folded his arms again. "You already know about Charles Saracino. That went perfectly. As a bonus, the man replacing him is none other than Jared Rhysaan."

The Broker sat up slightly. "You are telling me they put one of our spies in a Ministerial position?"

Tetrimus gave an amused nod. "The AIS has so far failed to match the spoor to the trail. And the Commissariat trusts him because of his actions in revealing Saracino's 'corruption'. I still fail to see the reason why human sexual peculiarity is so horrifying, but in this case it works in our favor. We have not made any contact with him, but I'm setting up the chain of people to allow us to do that now."

Tetrimus glanced at the list of names in his HUD. "As for Beatrice Shields, she was also handled, in the incident itself. I executed her, personally. That was my top priority. Although I have to admit, given the presence of Aethyta Vasir and several Dancers, only the spirits know who in the hells of Valak she was talking to prior to this mess blowing up. I know the intel says Dunn, but since when does Cerberus work with aliens?"

The Broker's fanged maw curled into a set of three jagged lines, the facial equivalent, Tetrimus thought, of a smile. "You are forgetting the evidence we have that Harper himself is in league with Trellani. No matter. What of Goto?"

Tetrimus sighed. "No traces. Hock sent out some kind of hit-man after her, but Goto's little girlfriend Ghost-Step turned him into a messy pile of meat on Ilium, and I haven't received any further updates. However, I'm not sure exactly how much of a threat Goto is. She's smart enough to realize that even if she spills what she knows, the Alliance may not care."

The Broker sighed. "You are missing the true threat. If she goes to Cerberus or the STG, they will listen and make good use of her. Put your best trackers on her, immediately."

Tetrimus nodded. "The only other outstanding element is the Normandy itself. Aria, in an attempt at normalizing relations, graciously allowed the Alliance to retrieve the wreckage from Alchera. They've been going over it for weeks and the last released report suggested that the stealth design itself must have been flawed."

Tetrimus straightened. "Officially, they're blaming the death of Shepard upon the geth, and stepping up war preparations. The deaths of Shepard and T'Soni are being spun by their propaganda people – a movie and even a holo-series are being worked on, along with subtle but clever social media manipulation. Certain unsavory facts about Shepard's past are being massaged and even the asari Republic is getting into it, casting the T'Soni woman as a tragic, misunderstood figure who died for love."

The Broker was silent for several more seconds before he shook his head again. "That is so illogical I cannot even fathom how it would work. Given the rank stupidity of most of the species in power, I am astonished they haven't suggested the geth killed T'Soni as well."

Tetrimus again coughed to hide his amusement. "For now, most of our people are focusing on the evacuation. Our ETA is slightly better now, and the Collectors do not appear upset by our lack of acquiring Shepard."

The Broker nodded. "And the device we are manufacturing for them?"

Tetrimus queried his omn-itool. "We're trying to locate sufficient tantalum for the next phase. The purity they want is not naturally occurring, so we are having to chemically synthesize it. The only strange request we had from them came in this morning – they asked us if we had listings of human wildcat colonies."

The Broker's hands tapped his desk controls. "How odd. Did you provide the information?"

Tetrimus shook his head. "I said we would have to check, to make sure that some of them were not actually Alliance honeypots to trap slavers. I wanted to check with you before providing them with Network intelligence."

The Broker examined haptic images on his desk as he queried something, then leaned back. "Provide them the information. Monitor what they do with it. Anything else of note?"

Tetrimus shook his head. "Not at this time. My people are still focusing mostly on the evacuation and looking for Cerberus. Do we know why they interfered with the recovery of Shepard's body?"

The Broker shut off his desk computer and stood slowly. "No. That is my current concern. A scan of the gravesite of Shepard on Earth reveals the materials there are from a flash-clone. But the information from P. as to Shepard's condition would seem to indicate she was not only dead but mangled. Why would he want the body, if he was going to convince the Alliance he had given it to them?"

Tetrimus shook his head. "I don't know. Barla Von made some surmises based on recent moves in the aerotech markets that Cerberus may be moving money into new shell corporations, but until we identify those we can't be sure of what they're doing. I presume you want me to keep working on this?"

The Broker nodded. "Yes. We will discuss Tazzik and my decision after I have rested."

Tetrimus knew a dismissal, and was out of the office seconds later, faintly sighing with relief when the doors sealed behind him. He hustled back to his own office, pulling up manifests of agents and trying to figure out how to best approach the coming problems.

His comm-link rang, and he tapped it. "Yes?"

The voice of his most senior science specialist, Dahimu, was slightly alarmed. "Ginnister Tazzik, I think I've found something interesting. I was reviewing the take from the deep space scanning arrays and came across … well. It looked like a galactic cluster just … exploding."

Tetrimus frowned. "Define 'exploding'."

"The region is roughly six to seven million light years away, so obviously this isn't contemporaneous, but over a course of less than twelve hours, the galactic core shrank in mass and energy emission by thirty three percent, and the spiral arms had waves of exploding supernova, followed by complete photonic cessation. It was like … a third of the galaxy just went black in less than a day. The loss of gravity from the core is making the entire galaxy come apart."

The phrasing caught Tetrimus's attention, and he did a quick data trawl. While that ran, he spoke. "Doctor, while I am usually interested in a certain fashion with some events, why is this significant?"

Dahimu was agitated. "The strange energy readings we got from the Collector device and from our sensor logs of Nazara matched the energy readings from this exploding, dying galaxy. Matched exactly."

As he spoke, the computer returned his query.

_Human religious reference. Christian Bible. Revelations. Chapter eight, verse twelve. "The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night."_

"...Doctor, when you said a third of the galaxy, was that a rough estimate?"

"No, it was exact. Actually...looking at the data, stellar luminescence and expected sequence spectra were also reduced by thirty-three percent."

The computer pinged again.

_Turian religious reference. Valuvaan Commentaries of the Spirit, Vetnah House. Chapter Haluth. "And then the dark spirits wrought great fury upon the sky, and a third of the starry host of the sky was struck down, and a third of the blazing sun, and a third of the comforting light of the moon. The shielding spirits wailed and warned of this sign. That no place was safe. That all places were as one place. And then I heard a call, a trumpet of fear, of doom, that melted my bravery and made the spirits wail in fear."_

Tetrimus glanced back at the comm display. "I see. Keep me informed. Tetrimus out."

As he hung up, the computer chimed again.

_Salarian religious reference. Secondary notation of the Visions of the Circle, expurgated by the SIX due to heretical influences of now forbidden rituals. "And my vision widened, as the Wheel turned, and then it slowly ground to a halt, as if held fast by sticky mud. And I turned my eyes to the sky above, and it was as if a third of the stars cried out and perished. A third of the light of the sun flickered and sickened. A third of the sky became madness, and I could hear the spheres of thought, shattering one by one. And a voice said to unto me, 'Behold, the trumpet sounds'."_

"...well, that's completely fucking creepy." Tetrimus canceled his query and set two agents to go dig around for additional references, while he sat back in his chair.

Perhaps this phenomena was something ancient humans, turians and salarians had seen before. It could be a natural event. But he doubted it. The humans and turians didn't have astrometric measuring tools until their holy books were centuries or millennia old. And even if they had...

"Computer. Find all congruent points of any religious documentation of an apocryphal nature for all known intelligent races. Focus on key words, stars, sky, sun, moon, trumpet. Commence."

The answer came back eleven seconds later. "Data found in all races religious materials. Would you like a summary?"

Tetrimus tapped the dedicated comm-link to the Broker. "I think we may have an issue."

**O-ATTWN-O**

"Do you buy the Broker's story, then?"

Valern thought carefully before answering the question. "I would suggest that in the long run it is immaterial if he is lying or telling the truth. We know, based on what the Alliance found, that it was definitely P.'s people who salvaged the wreck of the Normandy. The Broker is an opportunist. I suspect he wanted to snatch the IES technology the Normandy had, and took advantage of the attack by the geth – or this unknown, un-described ship with suspiciously Reaper-like weapons – to get it."

Tevos nodded, sipping at her vaporwine. "Still, Udina is correct when it comes to the fact that we don't know if the Broker is truly trustworthy or not."

Valern smiled faintly. "True. Then again, my people and yours have been allies for centuries and we still don't trust one another. Trust is a curious concept that we had to borrow the root word from you, after all. It is a concept no salarian can really grasp, as a lack of suspicion towards an intelligent being suggests we find them without threat. And everything is a threat."

Tevos smiled back. "Perhaps. Some threats are merely warnings given in the name of self preservation. But we now have moved far from the trail of the hunt. I distrust the Broker, but his information on the age of the Reapers meshes with the intelligence the Alliance is giving us. Tens of millions of years and the Reapers have been doing this. What are we doing to prepare?"

Valern rubbed a hand over his bracers, rubbing at a smudged spot. "What we can. Despite the risk, sharing of technology is at a high. The Broker's massive array of inferonomic sensors hasn't picked up any movement at the edge of space yet, so we have time. His estimate of thirty to fifty years is roughly inline with current STG guesses."

He glanced up, at the window showing the glowing white walls of the Presidium outside the Council Tower. "If we can reverse-engineer the weapon Nazara employed – and the last report from Thanix Palavanus was very positive sounding – then all we need is more ships and better preparations. The geth and Aria's hostility give us a perfect excuse to increase armaments and relax the Treaty of Fairaxen. Taxes will probably double, but the economy will also pick up."

Tevos pursed her lips. "The volus will howl."

He shrugged. "Then allow them part ownership of the shipyards. If Shepard was right, we cannot afford to put this off more than a decade or so. If we move now, while outrage at the geth is still high, then it will be easier to build up the financial framework we need to support larger fleets. As long as we have a clear enemy we can defeat and with Aria's piracy network crippled and the batarians withdrawing, we are poised to enter an economic boom."

She mused over this. "And the elcor?"

He leaned back in his own chair, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, a gesture he'd picked up from Udina and found strangely comforting. "If they want to submit a Spectre, require them to build more ships, not just another dreadnought or two. Let them match their military spending to that of the humans. The elcor can be managed – much less direct and bossy than humans or volus."

Tevos frowned. "The quarians are becoming somewhat tedious with their demands for war on the geth, This will at least silence them, I suppose." She sipped her wine again. "And once that's done...we would have sufficient strength to clear out Aria and whatever is going on in the Hegemony, or Empire, or whatever the batarians are calling their space nowdays."

Valern inclined his head. "I had not considered this. A good point. And the humans and turians would certainly approve."

She smiled. "And lead the way. We could always hold our own ships in reserve, in case of … complications. Or Reaper activity."

Valern matched her smile. "Prudence is always rewarded. My only worry is the disappearance of Vigil. I cannot help but think we are missing something in figuring out who would want the device destroyed. We still have no leads?"

Tevos' expression soured. "No, not yet. I hate admitting it, but Udina is probably right again. It had to have been indoctrinated assets of Saren. The fact that Ylana had so few people at her base means there must be more of them out there. We've already come up with improved scanners that can pick up the lesions Doctor Thanoptis identified as the key markers. We're putting them on every entrance to the Citadel and spreading the plans to all races for them to build. AVINA will also have scanners to examine the population at large."

Valern made a notation on his omnitool, then stood. "A good precaution. I'm late for a meeting with the SIX, so I must depart – but I enjoyed the meal." He gave a shallow bow, and departed, leaving Tevos alone in the room.

Her omni chimed, reminding her of the time, and she stood herself, pausing to stare out the window at the busy walkways and skypaths of the Presidium for a long moment before setting her wineglass down on the small table. She wasn't paying attention, and as she stepped away, the edge of her shawl caught the glass and sent it to the floor, where it shattered.

As she stared at the broken glass, she wondered if that was an omen, or merely a lack of foresight on her part.

* * *

The story will be continued in the next Book:

**OSABC: That Which Cannot Die**

* * *

_That is not dead which can eternal lie,  
And with strange aeons even death may die _


End file.
